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JOHNNY VOODOO by Dakota Lane

JOHNNY VOODOO

by Dakota Lane

Pub Date: Nov. 1st, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-32230-5
Publisher: Delacorte

From a new author, a haunting, sometimes intensely sensual tale of failed teenage love, set in a small bayou town. Since her mother's death, Deirdre and her father and brother have just been going through the motions of being a family, and the move from New York City to Charmette, Louisiana, has left her friendless to boot. Then she meets Johnny Vouchamps, a mysterious young man with an accordion and a seemingly psychic ability to know what she's thinking. She's gripped by a powerful attraction, and he seems to feel the same. Deirdre describes their moments together with breathless intensity; he rows her to his secluded cabin to meet his older brother, Leander, and plays strange and wild music for her. The passion is as brief, though, as it is intense; they drink too much at a party, lash out at each other, and the magic is gone. So is Johnny, although Deirdre has second thoughts. Several elements, including Deirdre's extended catalog of cliques and types in her new high school, and Leander, who turns out to be a transvestite, unsympathetically portrayed, interrupt the story's development, but the major players are complex, enigmatic characters struggling to deal with grief and regret. A brooding, atmospheric story. (Fiction. 12+)