Excerpt: 'The Witch of Bourbon Street' by Suzanne Palmieri

HEA welcomes Suzanne Palmieri, who's sharing an excerpt from The Witch of Bourbon Street, which arrives tomorrow.

About the book (courtesy of St. Martin's Griffin):

Situated deep in the Louisiana bayou is the formerly opulent Sorrow Estate. Once home to a magical family—the Sorrows—it now sits in ruins, ever since a series of murders in 1902 shocked the entire community. Now the ghosts of girls in white dresses shift in and out of view, stuck in time as they live out the past on repeat.

When Frances Green Sorrow is born carrying the "signs" of the so-called chosen one, it is believed she will bring her family back from the brink of obscurity, finally resurrecting the glory of what it once was and setting the Sorrows ghosts free.

But Frances is no savior.

Fleeing from heartbreak, she seeks solace in the seductive chaos of New Orleans, only to end up married too young in an attempt to live an ordinary life. When her marriage falls apart shortly after having a son, she returns home again—alone—just out of reach from the prying eyes of her family. But when her son disappears, she is forced to rejoin the world she left behind, exposing her darkest secret in order to find him and discovering the truth of what really happened that fateful year in the process.

Set amidst the colorful charm of The French Quarter and remote bayous of Tivoli Parish, Louisiana, Suzanne Palmieri's The Witch of Bourbon Street is a story of family, redemption, and forgiveness. Because sometimes, the most important person you have to forgive... is yourself.

Suzanne sets the scene for us …

Suzanne: In this excerpt, Frances Green Sorrow is remembering her young teenage years spent running the family fortune-telling business in New Orleans. Now in her mid-thirties, she is forced to remember things she'd tried to forget including a lost love, a sordid affair, an abandoned child and the ghosts of Sorrows past.

EXCERPT

Leaving behind things you love is the worst kind of drug. It makes you feel brave and solid. Love makes you crazy and leaving makes you sane, so why would leaving be anything but heroic? See how that works … it gets all turned around, and then the second you feel like your heart may fly untethered again, you take another dose of "leaving" and get yourself gone.

When I left for New Orleans (intent on handling the business and becoming the witch everyone said I was supposed to be), I didn't feel like I was leaving at all, I felt like I had arrived. "If I'm the queen of this Sorrow clan, then I'm gonna run it proper," I'd said. And I packed up my things and left.

I thought I was happy, that I knew everything, holding some kind of absurd court and loving every second of it. I'd always loved it, Millie and I grew up like wild things inside a traveling circus that didn't travel. And the people, they came to us. "Come one, come all," we'd sing out from the corner.

"Come all you magic-less lost searching souls. Come see the sorrows your fortunes they hold. Explore life's surprises before they unfold … right this way, right this way …"

We'd dance to the tap-tap-tapping of steel-toed shoes and the shining moans of the brass bands echoing through the streets. And that old building full of crazy, with its stucco peeling back one hundred years of Sorrow memories captured behind its iron gates blooming with trumpet vines.

And I loved our apartment on the third floor. How that hallway curved dramatically and the atrium that rounded out the back of the apartment had windows in surprising places that let light into all the dark corners. The golden lamplight that fell on the once red- painted walls now faded to coral, the lanterns with colored paper shades, and all our mismatched china. And those double French doors that opened into our secret greenhouse garden, its space filled with the scent of the bayou from the plants we needed to do our work.

At night I always wore the gypsy clothes people expect to see when they come to get their fortunes told by a Sorrow witch.

Especially Frances the Great.

I was also quite the alchemist, concocting all the tinctures and oils for the shop downstairs.

Every night, people came—by appointment only, which I found very fancy—and Eight Track would stand guard while I gave those people what they wanted—stories of love and happiness tinged by sadness so they felt true—and they gave me money for it. There was a little buzzer under the reading table in the parlor, so if someone got angry or drunk, I simply pressed it, and Eight Track came in and took care of the problem right quick.

Everything seemed like it was okay. More than okay. Until that night I lounged in a booth with Jazz Man, and I'd had a little too much to drink. Eight Track was behind the bar, and he'd called out, "Frankie girl, look see who just walked in. Lookin' all lost." Eight Track always had a way of sucking the awkward out of any situation by saying the very thing that could make it even more awkward. I used to be able to wield my humor like that. I lost that somewhere down the line. That's one thing Danny said during an angry fit a year into our marriage: "You used to be funny, you used to smile, now you walk around lookin' dead inside."

I looked up that night and there he was. Danny. He'd come in from Tivoli only to find me all cuddled up with Jazz Man.

He was so young. So was I. Sometimes, when I think on it, I get mad I ever expected him to act any differently.

Find out more about Suzanne and her books at suzannepalmieri.com.