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Shapeshifter, werewolves, a witch, prophetic dreams, old African gods in the New World: there is powerful magic and big trouble in the French Quarter of 19th-century New Orleans, the backdrop of the second novel by Alligator Point writer Margaret O. Howard “Lalin Happiness: Bewitched by the Greenhouses”, (Tallahassee, FL, Apalachee Press, 2021).
Lalin Bonheur, a Voudoun practitioner and healer, confronts enemies old and new as she seeks to protect the people she loves and to protect her own life from the powerful creatures who wish to steal her magic from her.
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The story opens with the handing over of a word, pushed through the slats of Lalin’s door, warning of danger and requesting a date. When Lalin meets the author of the note, he is told that werewolves – werewolves – are establishing themselves in New Orleans with the intention of taking “control of all the mystical powers in the city.”
Lalin, the most powerful healer and priestess, and with the most followers among the black and Creole peoples of the city and the surrounding bayous, tops their list of successes.
With the help of her lover and protector Etienne, Lalin tracks down the werewolf in the form of a small black and white cat, trying to find out when, where and how werewolves will strike. At the same time, she must also defend Etienne from her rival, a shape-changing witch who loves marriage.
Finally, can she trust the mysterious Frenchman who claims to be visiting New Orleans to study popular medicine for black and Creole peoples? She saw him in a vision, yes, and his priest vouches for him. However, he seems to be mainly interested in plants known to be dangerous, in particular wolfsbane.
“Bewitched by Talons” reads like the waters of a bayou, where mystery and danger are hidden by a placid surface. Lalin, as a character, is gentle and yet totally confident in her skills and powers. Her first-person voice is refined and old-fashioned, depending on the era, and the cadences with which the characters in the novel speak have a calming effect – hence danger and violence can arise at any time.
Howard’s love for the city and his research into this particular historical period is clear. His writing recreates the atmosphere and the place: market, street and forest, time and the rhythms of everyday life. Ups and downs of suspense, each ebb of domesticity, which is important to Lalin, followed by a higher upsurge of danger. When full horror erupts, it’s all the more captivating.
The novel is an excellent tale for a reader who appreciates a Gothic atmosphere and a touch of horror but without the carnage or gore.
It doesn’t bother to take the reader on a roller coaster ride with witches howling in lightning, monsters lurking and leaping, titanic battles between the massed forces of Good and Evil and the rest of the usual paraphernalia of fantastic horror.
Instead, there’s Lalin, rocking the shadows of New Orleans in her little black and white cat skin. A reader wants to tip with it, to see where the story goes.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee-area author tells haunting, shapeshifter Gothic tale
