Benjamin January, trained in France as both a surgeon and musician, is barely scraping together a living playing piano at the home parties of the New Orleans wealthy. It’s the summer of 1834 and all the well-to-do are leaving town to escape the heat, the smell and the chance of contracting yellow fever. Worried about his finances, recovering from serious injuries, Benjamin is further shocked to hear that his older sister has just been arrested for murder. Since Olympe is known locally as a voodooienne, or a practitioner of voodoo, Benjamin fears for her life, even though the authorities have only the flimsiest of evidence.

The deceased was a young mulatto who had recently inherited property from his white father. Shortly after this event, his mother filed a lawsuit claiming the young man as her slave, not her son, and he disappeared. Because it was known that Olympe had recently prepared a spell for the young man’s wife, the police arrest both the wife and Olympe.

Benjamin, a devout Catholic, has never approved of his sister’s practice of voodoo although he understands the draw and its place among the New Orleans slave and freed community. He is equally aware that a white jury, whether French or American, would never understand the voodoo culture and that without assistance, Olympe is doomed.

Always mindful of his tenuous position as a free man of color, Benjamin seeks audiences with the members of the young man’s family with mixed results. He soon finds graveyard dust (a curse) on his doorstep and is subsequently attacked by an unknown assailant. When a body is found and claimed by the mother as that of the young man, Benjamin is certain it is not, since he was present at the autopsy.

Benjamin receives assistance along the way from some unlikely sources, such as the local policeman, Shaw, despised by the aristocratic French as an uneducated Kentuckian. His friend Hannibal, opium addict and fellow musician, and the reigning Voodoo Queen, Madame Marie, also join forces with Benjamin to pursue the truth. In the end, it is Benjamin’s understanding of human nature as much as his investigations that free Olympe.

It is obvious that author Barbara Hambly has done her homework to make the 1830s New Orleans realistic right down to the smells and the sounds. Readers gain a new appreciation for what it took just to survive, much less the difficulty a free man of color would have dealing with the convoluted social strata of that era.

Although there are references to events that obviously took place in previous books, such as Benjamin’s recovering injuries and his various friendships, Graveyard Dust stands well on its own. You’ll want to go back and read the others*, but it isn’t necessary prior to reading and enjoying this book.

--K. W. Becker

*Free Man of Color
*Fever Season