Q&A with Norman Woolworth

 

 

 

Norman Woolworth is the author of the new novel The Lafitte Affair, the first in his Bruneau Abellard series. A retired corporate executive, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Lafitte Affair?

 

A: It was one of those “one thing led to another thing” kind of deals. Several years ago, while doing some ancestral research for my mother, I learned that I had an ancestor, Thomas Shields, who was Andrew Jackson’s purser during the Battle of New Orleans.

 

At the time, I had only the vaguest sense of the circumstances surrounding the battle, so I dug into a handful of books on the topic. I was surprised and impressed to learn of the pivotal roles played by the pirates Jean and Pierre Lafitte in securing that unlikeliest of triumphs for then-General Jackson.

 

That led to an interest in learning more about the Lafittes and, ultimately, a bit of an obsession with the remarkable life and many legends of Jean Lafitte.

 

It was also while researching my ancestor that I became intrigued by the macabre history of the Girod Street Cemetery, where Purser Shields was interred. I had never considered what happened to human remains removed from a deconsecrated cemetery.

 

Morbid curiosity about the fate of my forebear’s bones led me to Hope Mausoleum and Crypt 1083-A, and then to an interest in the crypt’s other residents, notably the actress Jane Placide.

 

And so, a decade or so ago, the germ of an idea began to form, but it wasn’t until the spring of 2022, when I retired from my day job, that I began to see how the pieces might fit together, and I began writing in earnest.

 

Q: Can you say more about how you researched the book and what you learned that especially surprised you?

 

A: I read widely in preparing to write The Lafitte Affair, but the source I returned to again and again was The Pirates Lafitte: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf by William C. Davis. It is as close to a definitive treatment of the Lafitte brothers as has been written.

 

Less comprehensive but no less compelling is Jean Laffite Revealed: Unravelling One of America’s Longest-Running Mysteries, by Ashley Oliphant and Beth Yarbrough, a mother-daughter tandem. The case they make for Lafitte’s second act as Lorenzo Ferrer is persuasive and helped me see how I could bring Lafitte back to New Orleans for his dalliance with Jane.

 

In terms of surprises, the machinations of the Napoleonic expat “filibusters” under the thumb of Joseph Bonaparte were utterly new to me, and a source of continuing fascination.

 

The same could be said of Edward Livingston and his loosely affiliated “Associates,” and the behind-the-scenes influence they wielded in the first couple decades of Louisiana statehood.

Q: What did you see as the right balance between fiction and history as you wrote the novel?

 

A: The way I thought about it was that the central stories of the novel -- the grave robbery; the romance between Lafitte and Jane Placide; the resurfacing of “La Violette” -- are pure fiction. But in presenting the context in which those stories would have occurred, I strove for historical accuracy.

 

There are instances in which I wield poetic license in the service of plot, and there are events described or implied that, while not implausible, likely never happened. In such cases, one of the characters usually flags speculation for what it is.

 

Q: The writer Proal Heartwell said of the book, “Norman Woolworth is a writer with an impeccable eye for detail, and his cleverly plotted novel is infused with the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of New Orleans.” What do you think of that description, and how important is setting to you in your work?

 

A: New Orleans has occupied a large parcel of my imaginative real estate ever since I attended school and met my future wife there, 40-plus years ago.

 

So many of my memories, and the “hooks” that keep pulling me back, are sensate in nature. The food stands out, of course, but I find that the city engages all one’s senses. I strove to convey that and am pleased that it has come across to Proal and other readers.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Book Two in the Bruneau Abellard series, tentatively titled The Bolden Cylinder!

 

Buddy Bolden is sometimes referred to as the first jazz musician. For five or six years at the turn of the 20th Century “King Bolden” ruled the New Orleans music scene. But then, just like that, he went mad and spent the last 30 years of his life in an asylum, never to be heard from again.

 

Despite long-standing rumors to the contrary, there are no known recordings of Bolden, so most of what we know about him comes from the anecdotal accounts of his contemporaries, interviewed decades after his rise and fall. Like Lafitte, therefore, Bolden represents something of a blank canvas on which to paint.

 

With that as a backdrop, all I can tell you is that, as in The Lafitte Affair, Bruneau Abellard, Bo Duplessis, and their friends and associates are confronted with intertwined mysteries both contemporary and historical.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: One of my pet peeves is that when people visit New Orleans, they rarely venture beyond the French Quarter. If they’re attending a convention, they’ll experience at least some of the Warehouse District, and maybe a few of the more adventurous souls will make it out to the Garden District and Magazine Street.

 

To me, New Orleans is a city of neighborhoods, first and foremost, so I’ve tried to set scenes in parts of the city readers may not be familiar with, like Uptown, Leonidas, Tremé, Gentilly, Kenner, and the Lakefront.

 

Same thing with restaurants. There are countless great new spots, and I’ve been to very few of them. Like Bruneau, I’m drawn to neighborhood institutions that have stood the test of time, like Katie’s, Domilise’s, Casamento’s, Manale’s, Mandina’s, Mosca’s, and Luizza’s by the Track.

 

My fondest hope is that the next time they visit, readers of these books will want to get out and explore a bit.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb