Gris-Gris Daughter [on hold]

Gris-Gris Daughter, both Southern gothic and darkly inspirational, explores an East Texas culture thick with racism and religion where family ties can strangle as well as nurture. Tense, emotional and literary this supernatural drama depicts a family at the crossroads of both angels and demons.

Burdened by the need for identity, Samantha Charles, a mixed-race product of rape, takes time away from college to visit the town of her roots in Eastern Texas. The story she discovers starts in the summer of 1963.

Reformed alcoholic and pastor, Joseph King has suffered from insomnia since returning from the Korean War. His early morning routine of push-ups and smoking a Lucky Strike may not sit well with his new Southern Baptist congregation in Bethel, Texas, but King is more interested in hearing the mysterious voice of God whom he believes is calling him to do the unthinkable – marry a teenage girl of mixed race as a white man in his thirties.

Over three generations Gris-Gris Daughter weaves together the story of Elise Rabideau, Joseph King, and the tormented lives of their offspring. Ultimately it examines the cultural and social issues that have ravaged much of the South over the last 200 years and how their binding effects, which without being broken, will continue to haunt the generations to follow.

Rape, murder, voodoo, hurricanes, revenge, demons, lynch mobs and the like ratchet up the stakes in this gothic tale of failure, redemption and forgiveness.