Casket Girls: A Novel

A scandalous Parisian aristocrat. An enslaved girl with voodoo skills. A French widow with a dark secret. A free woman of color from Cuba. A criminal with an agenda. A shy country girl from rural France. And twelve Ursuline nuns.

Together, they spend six months crossing the ocean, arriving at La Nouvelle Orleàns, France’s outpost in their colony at America’s South shores. The year is 1727.

Regardless of the color of their skin or their social class, the Ursulines educate them at their convent where they find safety. But outside, they face criminals and sometimes commit crimes themselves. As they endure trials, their lives intertwine – and their pasts are revealed.

The story of the Casket Girls — one of Catholicism and Voodoo, nuns and prostitutes, of pirates and smugglers, tragedy and redemption, and most of all survival — has never been told before. Rooted in historical facts and occurrences, some of the characters are based on real people. Their stories – told over the course of twenty years — however, are fictional.