NEW ORLEANS: Queen of the River

The author, a native of New Orleans, commands a wide variety of fascinating history, crammed with odd and interesting facts relating to the development of the city from its settlement to Ante-Bellum days. However in choosing to fictionalize the account, the history is obscured by the continuous reader effort necessary to keep track of the myriad of fictional mouthpieces whose stilted dialogue move that history forward. A straight account of strident, colorful New Orleans requires no praline-coating-- it would have gone down more easily without it.