Lyle Saxon's only novel vividly captures the lives of the Cane River's people of color. Children of Strangers is the powerful and moving novel of love in a community bound by race and class. Famie is a mulatto girl, a half-breed. Her ancestors were free blacks who rivaled the white planters in wealth and culture. But on a Louisiana plantation in the 1920s, Famie is an outcast, rejected by whites because of her black ancestors and unwilling to associate with the sharecroppers who are descendants of slaves. An illicit love affair with a white landowner leaves Famie with a son, Joel, to raise. Her dream is that Joel will someday become accepted into white society. But in her struggle to transcend race and class, Famie must sacrifice the last links to her past.

Lyle Saxon (1891-1946) is renowned as one of Louisiana’s foremost authors. He was the central figure in the state’s literary community during the 1920s and 1930s and was well-known as a raconteur and bon vivant. He divided his time between his house in New Orleans and a cottage on the Melrose Plantation near Natchitoches. During the 1930s he headed the Louisiana WPA Writers’ Project, which produced the WPA Guide to Louisiana and the WPA Guide to New Orleans. According to Chance Harvey in The Life and Selected Letters of Lyle Saxon (available from Pelican), Saxon was also the local patron to fledgling artists who flocked to him with great devotion. Each of Saxon’s works is a look into the lives of real people through personalized narratives. His books chronicle the lives of individuals and legends that emerged from the bayou country. Lyle Saxon held a deep affection for Louisiana, as clearly evidenced by his prolific writings.

ISBN: 9781455615421

Paperback

5.5 x 8.5

320 pages

Pelican Publishing, 2011