{"id":1036,"date":"2026-01-13T21:47:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T21:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wp_stories\/?p=857"},"modified":"2026-03-01T04:03:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T04:03:30","slug":"flags-on-the-bayou-2023-burke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/?p=1036","title":{"rendered":"Flags on the Bayou (2023) – Burke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The previous book<\/a> reviewed here took place in the turn of the 20th century in Wyoming. This one is during in the Civil War in Louisiana. In a place with a lovely name – Lady of the Lake Plantation<\/em> – which contrary to the the name is home to mostly ugly people and ugly events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought I was getting a Robicheaux\/Purcell (Dave and Clete!) Burke-style novel, but no!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think as Burke ages he is spending a lot of time in his head on the very complicated history of the South! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is all about
messed-up people with noble moments<\/em>,
to balance our heroes, who are
noble people with messed up moments<\/em>.
… it’s complicated…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Book<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

So far we have three narrators, each introduced in a new chapter which they narrate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • Wade Lufkin<\/em> – the courtly but tortured overseer of the plantation<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Pierre Cauchon<\/em> – the local lawman – grew up dirt poor, has already been called “white trash” to his face by ole Wade in a bad moment.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Hannah Laveau<\/em> – a slave woman – she can read and write … which slaves ain’t allowed to do. She’s hauntingly beautiful of course, so she drives the repressed white guys mad with desire. She lost her beloved baby boy at the Battle of Shiloh (Shiloh Church<\/strong> as they call it here).
    Apparently the Confederate Army took their slaves with them when they marched north to battle!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    So… 20 pages in we have an upper-class white guy, a lower-class white guy and a no rights at all young black woman slave. Nice setup! The white guys ain’t perfect, but they both do at least have enlightened-for-the-time views on slavery, which they keep to themselves. So far I’m diggin the three narrators thing. Authors always have their little ways to lets us know what characters are thinking, but spelling out their secret thoughts in first person for three different people will certainly do the trick!
    [Spoiler: the two guys think about hot slave ladies a lot<\/em>!]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So far I’m diggin the three narrators thing. Authors always have their little ways to lets us know what characters are thinking, but spelling out their secret thoughts in first person for three different people will certainly do the trick! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I think the feelings Burke’s having are so profound to him that he must just spell it out so none of us miss the meaning! It’s all part of the experience of late-stage Burke novels.
    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Next chapter is from good ole Pierre. His thought of the day:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This is how plantation society works: you screw down and marry up<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    All three of these people are so mean to each other. Pierre visits Hannah in the jail, but she treats him like crap for some reason. Wade and Pierre fight a duel because they piss each other off so much. (spoiler alert, the duel fizzles, otherwise we’d lose one of our three protagonists! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Page 86<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    We’ve added two more narrators:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    • Florence<\/em> Milton<\/em> – an independent-minded free-thinking single white woman.
      (I guess the “white” implied in the description, but to be clear<\/em>…)
      She helps Hannah escape the jail.
      She may not be thinking about the boys, but the boys are thinking about her<\/em>!<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Colonel Hayes<\/em> – commander of the Red Legs.
      Another really awful, morally distorted human being.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      It’s probably, sadly, pretty accurate, but Burke’s version of Louisiana during the endgame of the Civil War is a true hellscape<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \n
      • Most of the young white men are dead or crippled (physically and mentally). <\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • A battalion of Union troops (called bluebellies<\/strong> are implementing the Sherman-esque scorch earth policy, marching around fucking up any thing they want (right now, think Trumps cabinet secretaries!<\/em>)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Then there’s the the Redlegs<\/strong>, some kind of rogue army of cashiered Union soldiers, also marching around fucking up any thing they want.
        They come from Kansas, but Burke puts a bunch of them in the bayous for the purposes of this narrative.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Then there are the slaves, who can see how the war is going and expect to be freed by Mr Lincoln any day now.
        So they are tired of all this shit and ready to move on.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Along with hot slave woman Hannah
        (who is now on the run from the law)
        we now also have hot free Negro Darla<\/em>,
        who has bewitched ole Pierre.
        So far Darla is the coolest person in the darned book! I heart her! \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

        Page 190-ish<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

        What a sad, damaged bunch of people.
        Every white person in the book carries around some physical deformity, which might be little too heavy handed even for Burke in his gloomy mode! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Some deformities they were born with and some were acquired during the course of the war.
        The two fine-looking young black women are still fine-looking. (happy to report \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Hannah and Florence, have killed a few white dudes who deserved killing, and are now on the run for it.
        For some complicated reason they are joined by Wade. The three of them are in Baton Rouge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Darla and dorky little Pierre are the new fun couple. They are trawling the lake for barrel full of gold which old man Lufkin was rumored to have sunk in the lake to keep it from the Yankees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Now it’s time to do my Burke pattern of skipping as many pages as it takes to get past some particularly gruesome episode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        I get it what War is Hell, and war in the wind-down of the Civil War in Louisiana was particularly hellish, but Burke’s mission nowadays is to make sure we feel<\/strong> it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Page 228<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

        I think Pierre has become the go-to narrator.
        The one that does the heavy lifting in terms of keeping the plot momentum going!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Very hot free Negro Darla lives out by one of the many lakes, where Pierre thinks they might have hid the family’s treasure from from the invading Northerners. The randy white men need to be reminded that always she keeps her straight razor within easy reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Page 280-ish<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

        The war and the awfulness don’t end, but our heroes mostly come out of it alive and in a better place. The evil-est psychopath in the book, Col John Endicott, a free-booting privateer, gets taken out be the ladies – Florence clocks him with a doorstop and Darla finishes him with gusto with her trusty straight razor. yay!
        Hannah find her 5 year old son (that she’s been searching for the whole book) and they get away to some other place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Epilogue<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

        I won’t spoil the cheesy-but pretty cool situation of the epilogue, but suffice to say that all the heroes mentioned above get out and live happy lives far away from all that sadness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Darla and Pierre are together forever (hooray!). I do worry about Pierre’s noble horse Varina. She was one of the unsung stars of the novel, and I fear she probably left at the dock when they departed for the lovely place where they ended up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        The previous book reviewed here took place in the turn of the 20th century in Wyoming. This one is during in the Civil War in Louisiana. In a place with a lovely name – Lady of the Lake Plantation – which contrary to the the name is home to mostly ugly people and ugly events. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[50,57,51],"class_list":["post-1036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-burke","tag-civil-war","tag-louisiana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1036"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1446,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions\/1446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}