Rising Tides (40 page)

Dear Reader,

I hope you’ve enjoyed this window into twentieth-century Louisiana. In researching
Rising Tides
and
Iron Lace,
my first book about Aurore Gerritsen and her family, I strengthened my own belief that Louisiana in any decade is a fascinating place filled with political intrigue and excitement, and imbued with its own unique flavor.

Since truth
is
often stranger than fiction, let me clarify which is which in both books. Hurricane Betsy and the unnamed hurricane that destroyed Chénière Caminada did take place, with the loss of life and destruction that I recorded. Stories of buried treasure exposed by that earlier storm and of people rescued after days in the Gulf or the marshes are still part of the local repertoire. As for Betsy, and the mysterious “booms” heard just be fore the levees collapsed to flood the Ninth Ward and Saint Bernard Parish, I can only report that it’s still a widely circulated rumor.

My character Largo Haines never existed, but Leander Perez, the boss of Plaquemines Parish, certainly did. As mentioned here, Perez did build a “concentration camp” to be used for civil-rights workers, and there were reports after Hurricane Betsy that Perez rounded up some of the African-American residents of Plaque mines at gunpoint and forced them to clean up the parish. To read more about Perez’s tiny dictatorship on the banks of the Mississippi, I suggest
The Life and Times of Leander Perez
by James Judge Conaway. Additionally, there
were
incidences of violence against Louisiana clergy who spoke out in favor of civil rights, but both the town of Bonne Chance and the incidents portrayed there were fictitious. Finally, my
rendering of the incident with General Patton is based on an account of an actual event. I never discovered the name of the real sailor who rescued the pistols, but I thank him now, as General Patton must have thanked him then.

Iron Lace
had a long list of acknowledgments. I’d like to take this opportunity once again to thank all those people for their help and support during the writing of both books. And in addition, I’d like to thank Paul Murray and Jeri Moulder for their warm hospitality during the final stages of my research.

My years in New Orleans were six of the most exhilarating years of my life. My special thanks to a city and a state that grabbed my imagination and refused to let go.