The Sound of Building Coffins

by Louis Maistros

Overview

It is 1891 in New Orleans, and young Typhus Morningstar cycles under the light of the half-moon to fulfill his calling, re-birthing aborted foetuses in the fecund waters of the Mississippi River. He cannot know that nearby, events are unfolding that will change his life forever - events that were set in motion by a Vodou curse gone wrong, forty years before he was born. In the humble home of Sicilian immigrants, a one-year-old boy has been possessed by a demon. His father dead, lynched by a mob, his distraught mother at her wits' end, this baby who yesterday could only crawl and gurgle is now walking, dancing, and talking - in a voice impossibly deep. The doctor has fled, and several men of the cloth have come and gone, including Typhus' father, warned off directly by the clear voice of his Savoir. A newspaper man, shamed by the part he played in inciting the lynch mob that cost this boy his father, appalled by what he sees, goes in search of help. Seven will be persuaded, will try to help...and all seven will be profoundly affected by what takes place in that one-room house that dark night. Not all will leave alive, and all will be irrevocably changed by this demonic struggle, and by the sound of the first notes blown of a new musical form: jazz.

"Maistros succeeds by populating the novel with hoodoo queens, jazzbos, tricksters, rounders, and various folks with one foot in reality and the other in the spirit world. A sprawling, complex, and ultimately absorbing work."
—John Lewis, Baltimore Magazine

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780998643175
Publisher:	Commonwealth Books, Black Widow
Publication date:	05/15/2018
Edition description:	Revised & Augmented Edition
Pages:	452
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Louis Maistros is a longtime resident of the New Orleans 8th Ward neighborhood. His work has appeared in publications such as the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Relix Magazine, the Baltimore City Paper, Entrepot, and many others. He is also an accomplished art photographer, and has been called "a wizard with light, shadows, and colors" by Louisiana Poet Laureate Julie Kane. He is mildly self-conscious about the fact that he shares a birthday with Lee Harvey 'swald, and is currently working out a conspiracy theory about that — in the form of a novel-in-progress tentatively entitled "Holy Meaux."

Editorial Reviews

This ambitious, vivid novel by writer, New Orleans resident and jazz record shop owner Maistros starts out in the Big Easy of 1891. Noonday Morningstar, an African-American Baptist preacher, is summoned to pray over a dying one-year-old boy whose supposed illness is actually demonic possession. Aided by Dr. Jack, an abortionist and witch doctor; Beauregard Church, a veteran prison guard; and Buddy Bolden, a cornet player specializing in the new jazz sound, Noonday performs a voodoo exorcism. Fifteen years later, Noonday is dead, and his youngest son, the diminutive and gifted Typhus, has developed an odd love for Lily, a girl he knows only through a photograph. Following Typhus and those connected to the exorcism through New Orleans' vibrant underbelly, Maistros develops a rich, dangerous world of musicians, mob justice and magic. Stylistic flourishes, lush descriptions (especially of the voodoo practices), and dialect-heavy narration sometimes jar the story's flow, but the plot's insistent pace builds to a satisfying though familiar storm-buffeted climax. (Feb.)

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Publishers Weekly

One has to write with considerable authenticity to pull off a story steeped in magic and swamp water that examines race and class, death and rebirth, Haitian voodoo, and the beginnings of jazz in 1891 New Orleans. Maistros's gritty debut novel follows the interconnected lives of the Morningstar siblings-all lovingly named by their father after diseases-as they wrestle with a powerful demon, con outsiders, kill and die, die and are reborn. The plot is complex and magical, grounded in the history of the city, without being overly sentimental. There is a comfort with death as a part of life in this work that reveals deep feeling for the city and its past. Of course, every novel about New Orleans must have a good hurricane. Like the one in Zora Neale Hurston's classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, this hurricane destroys the city while making hope possible. Highly recommended for all fiction collections, especially where there is an interest in jazz.
—Gwen Vredevoogd

Library Journal

Cursed lives revived and cleansed by a 1906 New Orleans flood. Maistros' characters represent the dregs of the old New Orleans underclass, Creoles of mixed-race heritage. In 1891, the habitues of a local gin joint attend the exorcism of a djab, or voodoo demon, possessing Dominick, infant son of Antonio, who has just been lynched by an anti-immigrant mob. This demon was originally unleashed in 1853, when Malvina, a voodoo priestess, summoned it to wreak revenge on Marcus Nobody Special, a gravedigger who had impregnated and abandoned her niece Maria. Noonday Morningstar, a widowed preacher, defies divine warnings to preside over the exorcism, and pays with his life. Also present is Doctor Jack, a sawbones and abortionist, and nine-year-old Typhus (Noonday's children are all named after diseases), whose heart is gripped by his father's ghostly hand. Dominick grows into trickster and troublemaker Jim Jam Jump, spelling trouble for the surviving Morningstars, including his partner-in-crime Dropsy. The tangled fortunes of Noonday's progeny are the closest thing this novel has to a unifying device. Malaria gives up singing ambitions to mother her orphaned siblings. Diphtheria has clawed her way up from "the cribs," low-rent fleshpots, to the relative luxe of the city's best bordello. Her son West, whose neglectful father Buddy becomes the first jazz cornet man, is obsessed with buttons. Diphtheria elected not to abort him with Doctor Jack's toxic tea. Typhus, Doctor Jack's assistant, "rebirths" aborted fetuses by reshaping them into Mississippi catfishes. Doctor Jack urges Typhus, now a man forever trapped in a nine-year-old's body, to concentrate his unmet romantic yearnings on the photographof a mysterious beauty. Marcus fishes tirelessly, awaiting an encounter with one special catfish, his lost son. The spirit realm, which in Maistros' world resides in water, intrudes upon the living with plenty of irreverent and poignant commentary. As the great flood approaches, the Morningstar body count mounts, and self-effacing Malaria will be the family's last hope. Riotous, undisciplined and disjointed, yet mesmerizing. Agent: Barbara Braun/Barbara Braun Literary Agency

Kirkus Reviews