By Elizabeth Shown Mills
6x9, Hardbound, 587 pages
ISBN 1-59331-175-3
 

Isle of Canes is the epic account of a multi-racial family in Louisiana that, over four generations and more than 150 years, rose from the chains of slavery to rule the Isle of Canes. Historically accurate, this first novel by eminent genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills is a gripping tale of cultural and racial conflict, economic triumph and ruin, and unyielding family pride told against the backdrop of colonial and antebellum Louisiana.

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About The Book
Her grandfather had been a king; her parents lived as slaves. At her parents’ death, sixteen-year-old Coincoin vowed to restore her family to the grandeur it deserved. One day, her family would rule again.

She kept her vow. Strong-willed, resourceful, and hauntingly beautiful, Coincoin had been trained by her mother in the healing arts. She would use that skill and many others as stepping stones to freedom.

But the path to keeping her vow was not an easy one. Forsaken by her husband when she would not abandon their children to flee slavery, Coincoin was sustained by a faith that she would one day find a better route to freedom for all of them. When her destiny confronted her in the form of a Frenchman seeking wealth and adventure on the Louisiana frontier, she met it boldly and paid the price it demanded.

Wealthy, educated, cultured, and proud, Coincoin’s descendants would rule the Isle of Canes, but they would be pawns in the cultural battle between Louisiana’s Creoles and Anglo newcomers. The Civil War that promised equality took away their identity as a special caste and left them destitute. Then Jim Crow stripped them of the last of their rights.

Yet throughout all indignities, the Isle’s Creoles of color never lost their pride, their respect for their heritage—French, Spanish, African, and Indian—or their belief that they were meant to be a bridge across the great American divide between black and white.

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