Lives of the Saints

Fresh out of college in New England, a young woman returns home to New Orleans and is quickly pulled back into the city’s “wastrel-youth contingent” in this cult-classic novel of love and decadence, now with a new introduction.

“Claude Collier made the world seem kind,” says Louise Brown, beginning a tale of Violent Love, Breakdowns, Moods, and Felonious Drunkenness that floats from one lush, green, sweltering New Orleans evening to another. When Louise returns home after four years of college in New England, she bemusedly finds herself reimmersed in New Orleans society’s “wastrel-youth contingent.”

At the center of this gin-fueled hurricane is Claude Collier, rumpled, accident-prone, supremely sweet—and desperate. For Claude, Louise is his steadying focus; for Louise, Claude is the only man who can cause her heart to “break into a million pieces on the floor.”