The Seamstress of New Orleans

McPhail (The Abolitionist’s Daughter) entices with the story of two women from different backgrounds who discover common ground in turn of the 20th-century New Orleans. It begins in Chicago, where Alice Butterworth’s cotton broker husband, Howard, doesn’t return after a routine trip to Memphis. She searches for work as a seamstress to try to provide for herself, and, seeking both relief from the brutal winter and information about Howard, she takes the train to Memphis. She comes up short, and continues on to New Orleans, where she finds work as a seamstress at an orphanage. Alice meets Constance Halstead, a widow, and offers to sew her a gown for the upcoming Mardi Gras’s inaugural all-women krewe. The women’s friendship deepens as they learn they both had a son die in infancy, but Constance carries a secret about her husband Benton’s death and the continued threat from the sinister members of the Black Hand who are still seeking to recover gambling debts Benton owed to them. An undercurrent of New Orleans’s dark side propels the story, heightening the tension and supplying McPhail with a wealth of evocative details. Historical fiction fans will be drawn to this. Agent: Mark Gottlieb, Trident Media Group. (June)