This is one of those books that attracted me because of the cover. Most gothic covers feature a variation on a young woman in a flowing dress running away from a dark, foreboding house in the background. This cover, however, surprised me by featuring a young woman sitting in a wheelchair! Yes, we still get the foreboding plantation house in the background (with the obligatory one light on in an upstairs window); however, the young woman on this cover is not running at all - rather, she is sitting, staring directly at the reader with an expression that tells you she is trapped and cannot escape whatever terror is waiting in that house. Having never seen a gothic with an invalid such as this on the cover, I had to snag it and find out exactly what it was about!
Dark Over Acadia is written by Anne Talmage, who I discovered (after considerable searching!) is actually a pen name for Talmage Powell (1920-2000). Powell began writing in the 1940s, his work appearing in many pulp magazines, such as Black Mask and Dime Mystery. He has also had short stories appear in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. He also wrote four books in the '60s as Ellery Queen. From what I was able to learn, this book is the only gothic novel he wrote (and the only instance of his using "Anne Talmage" as a pseudonym, although he did use others over the course of his writing career). The story is set in the swamp land of Louisiana in the early 1970s (the book having been published in 1971), and rather than a dark, unwelcoming house you find in most gothics, this book features a rather grand plantation manor known as Devereau House (and although it is not spelled the same, I could not help but think of Blanche Devereaux ever time I saw the name of the house and the last name of the family!).
Talmage (Powell) provides readers with a number of quirky characters, any of whom could potentially turn out to be the evil behind poor Lucy's condition. Lucy's father, Huxley, comes across as a kind, elderly patriarch, but the mere mention of Prospera Clantell sends him into a fury. Lucy's brother, Antoine (Tony), is a hard one to figure out, since his outward appearance would mark him as a Cajun rebel, but his soft-spoken nature when it comes to Diana shows another side of him. Lucy's cousin, Philip Lockridge, is all business, a dependable sort who takes a keen interest in Diana, much to the chagrin of his assistant, Robin Toutain - a woman determined to win Philip's hand and who makes no bones about removing anyone who gets in her way. Then there is Myree, a housekeeper that Diana first sees as a "mangy old cat" (p. 46), but whose gruff exterior could just be a defense from a hard life lived. There is also Clotidle (Cloty) Mathis, Lucy's governess, who has cared for her ward for years and is praying Diana can get to the bottom of what really happened. And one must not forget Ozar Fant, the Cajun drifter who lives in the swamps on Devereau property - a man that can be violent in one moment and tender in the next. Finally, there is the regal woman known as Domina, who is a friend to Huxley and appears to know everything that happens in the swamp. The Devereau family has its secrets, and one of those secrets has come back to exact a deadly price from this family!
I readily admit that I was engaged with trying to figure out which of these members of the cast could have caused Lucy's injuries and is now intent on getting rid of Diana. A pitchfork launched at her from the upper floor of the barn ... locked in the mausoleum and left to die ... and more than once warned to leave Devereau House before it's too late. I wavered a bit between a few of the characters, thinking each had a possible motive - but I was caught off-guard by the revelation of who was really behind the attacks; I did not see that coming at all! Which, of course, made for a very nice surprise, as it kept this book from being predictable at all. Thus, not only did the book offer a unique cover, but it provided a well-written tale of mystery and gothic suspense.
Along with the gothic, Talmage (Powell) provides readers with some of this history of this area of Louisiana. Lucy describes the area of Cajun country as "A world of its own, where the native dialect is a mixture of French, Spanish, English. It's still more French-colonial than automated American. Fellow from the Indochina rice paddies could feel right at home there" (p. 9). Diana also considers the Acadians who had first come to the area, driven south "when the British had wrested control of Canada from the French more than two hundred years ago" (pp. 9-10). She even wonders "how the Acadians had picked such an unlikely, far-off destination ... Louisiana was French at the time, and the back-delta country offered peace and a chance to build in a land no one else wanted" (p. 10). We even get a lesson on jambalaya, which Huxley explains, "was a ham and rice dish ... Jambon, French for ham, and a la ya, a sort of African for rice (p. 63). In some ways, it felt very much like a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys book from the Harriet Stratemeyer Adams era, when the books always seemed to include some sort of lesson on history, artifacts, or regions.
This is one of those rare gothics where we actually know the name of the artist who provided the art for the cover! The artist was Charles Lilly, who is probably best known for his painting of "Malcolm X" in 1973, which was used for the cover of Alex Haley's novel, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The cover for this book must have been one of his earliest professional works, as he graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1970 (Artist: Charles Lilly), and Dark Over Acadia was published in 1971. The cover is apparently representational in nature, since the scene never occurs anywhere in the book - Lucy is bedridden for the entire story, never sitting up in a wheelchair at any time. The statue that can be seen in front of Devereau House on the cover likely represents the statue of St. Joan that falls on Lucy in the chapel behind the manor. Nevertheless, the expression on Lucy's face, along with the dark green, black, and blues of the cover give it a very high creep factor that would send a chill down anyone's spine!
Just like the last Magnum Gothic Original that I read (Ravensridge), this is another gothic that I highly recommend - well written, great story, and a gothic tale that will keep you guessing!
RATING: 10 pairs of spectacles with one lens broken out of 10 for an unusual gothic tale, Cajun-style, with some of the most unusual names I've seen to date!
No comments:
Post a Comment