Hurricane by @jewell_p_rhodes --The Ultimate Mississippi Delta Whydunit

When I reviewed the Jewell Parker Rhodes children's fantasy Bayou Magic recently  here, I said that I wanted to catch up on novels by Rhodes that I hadn't read.  That included this final book in her contemporary mystery trilogy about Dr. Marie Levant, a physician descended from Voodoo priestess Marie Lavaux.  Levant became a Voodoo priestess herself after re-locating to New Orleans.

As readers might expect Hurricane deals with Hurricane Katrina, but not a description of NOLA's experience of Katrina.  Rhodes doesn't even reveal the post-Katrina fate of Charity Hospital where Dr. Levant worked. I personally discovered what happened to Charity Hospital while watching a Book TV discussion on C-SPAN 2 on We're Still Here Ya Bastards, a non-fiction book by Roberta Brandes Gratz about NOLA's recovery.  If you're interested, you can read Gratz's article on Charity Hospital which appeared in The Nation here.

Now it's time to begin the review of what Hurricane did include.

                                                         

It starts with Marie Levant discovering an entire family murdered in their home outside the small fictional African American community of Delaire.   When she reports the crime in NOLA, no action is taken.  So she decides to investigate herself and discovers that the case is much larger than she ever imagined.   I was exposed to some very sad information that I can't unlearn now about the tragedy of environmental degradation in the Mississippi Delta that didn't begin with the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  This is a novel about real life horror and monsters that do exist.  Similar environmental atrocities can and do happen anywhere.

Delaire also had a Hoodoo woman known as Nana who was a visionary and a healer.  She had seen that Marie was coming to Delaire.  Dr. Levant was expected to be their savior, but addressing symptoms without any knowledge of the underlying cause is not really healing.  In fact, it can be a terrible mistake. 

Marie recognized one of the spirits that Nana worked with.  She was Mami Wata, the mermaid goddess from West Africa who I encountered in Rhodes' Bayou Magic.  As a nature spirit, the interests of Mami Wata did not necessarily coincide with those of humans.  This was a spiritual lesson that Marie Levant needed to learn while Katrina descended on her city.

I've said a great deal about the themes of Hurricane and their implications in this review, but I don't think I can convey the brilliance of this book.  Readers must experience the hard truths that Hurricane uncovers for themselves.

                                                   

                                                     

Bayou Magic by Jewell Parker Rhodes

I'm not embarrassed to admit that I liked Ninth Ward which was Jewell Parker Rhodes' Hurricane Katrina novel written for children.  I recently discovered that she had written another children's novel called Bayou Magic which deals with important themes.  It also has a beautiful cover.

                                                  

Maddy was a ten year old from New Orleans who went to spend the summer with her grandmother at Bon Temps Bayou.  Her grandmother was an herbalist. She also carried the history of her maternal line going back to the ancestress who came from Africa accompanied by the spirit that she worshiped.  This spirit is known as Mami Wata.

I had heard of Mami Wata but knew very little about her.  I was under the impression that she had originated in  Benin like the spirits known as the Loa.  The Loa are the spirits of Voodoo.  Jewell Parker Rhodes had been writing about Voodoo in a series of novels for adults.   Yet Mami Wata wasn't originally part of the Voodoo pantheon.   Her origin is definitely West African, but I don't see any evidence that she came from any particular place.  One theory is that she actually began as The African Manatee who is apparently called Maame Water.  I think there's a chicken and egg problem there.  The African manatee could have been named after the spirit who was already being worshiped in ancient West Africa.

I got to know Mami Wata a bit better through the eyes of Maddy in Bayou Magic.  Maddy was the first in several generations of her family to see and speak to Mami Wata.  At first Maddy thinks it's "only a dream", but dreams are important in African traditions.  It's one of the ways that spirits can communicate with human beings.

Although Maddy's grandmother never saw Mami Wata herself, I was impressed with her wisdom.  When Maddy told her that she wanted to be a hero, her response was "To be a hero, bad things have to happen."  Maddy's grandmother also sensed that bad things were indeed about to happen and that Bayou Bon Temps was in jeopardy.  The approaching disaster turned about to be very real, and a massive disruption of the environment of the entire region.    How could a ten year old have any impact on such a cataclysm?  Maybe she could with the help of magic, and a certain West African water spirit.

So  age old religion collides with contemporary environmental concerns, and a little girl does have a chance to be a hero.  I loved it.   I'll definitely need to catch up on Jewell Parker Rhodes novels that I've missed.