A Free Man of Color by Barbra Hambly

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

A Free Man of Color (1997)

by Barbra Hambly

New Orleans, Louisiana 

Louisiana: 30/30

  I found the missing Louisiana title from the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America,  A Free Man of Color by Barbra Hambly.  What happened here is I read the wrong Barbra Hambly novel- Good Man Friday, both volumes from her series detailing the exploits of free man of color and surgeon, musician and private investigator Ben January.  Good Man Friday was cool because January went to Washington DC and ran into Edgar Allan Poe- the actual inventor of the detective story. The juxtaposition of the past of relative racial harmony and toleration and the (at the time of the story) new American regime, where white are free and black are not, provides much of the plot and narrative tension.