Mamma’s Moon
The Hoodoo of Peckerwood Finch
by Jerome Mark Antil
Genre: Thriller
“Jerome Mark Antil’s Mamma’s Moon does
for Acadiana what Truman Capote did for Tiffany’s or Tennessee
Williams did for streetcars. This is a novel about a lot of things,
including sex, crime, life, and death. But most of all, it’s a novel
about hope and about love.
Mamma’s Moon gives the reader a dramatic and insightful glimpse into the very
special world of today’s Louisiana French Acadians, whose early
tragic history was immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his
classic poem, Evangeline, even before the heartless bayou’s more contemporary history was
buried deep and forgotten.” Tom Hyman (LA Times bestselling
author: writer for LIFEmagazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Argosy, Washington
Post Book World and New York Magazine.)
This novel, Mamma’s Moon, is a sequel to the novel, One More Last Dance. It
stands alone as an entirely self-contained story, but for those of
you who may not have read the earlier novel, I include here a brief
description of the main characters and of the events that preceded this story.
A bond that can only happen on a dance floor happened in a cafe off
Frenchman Street among four unlikely characters: a man who was about
to die; his friend, an illiterate Cajun French yardman; and two of
the most successful women in New Orleans.
Aging Captain Gabriel Jordan, retired, was given two months to live, three
months before he met “Peck”–Boudreau Clemont Finch–a
groundskeeper on the back lawn of his hospice on Bayou Carencro,
Louisiana. It was at the hospice that Gabe told Peck his dream of
seeing the Newport Jazz Festival before he died. They became friends,
and Peck offered to help grant his wish by taking him there.
And they began their journey.
It quickly became a journey with complications and setbacks. They saved
each other many times, but they were in turn saved by two
extraordinary women: Sasha (Michelle Lissette), a real estate agent
in New Orleans’s posh Garden District, and her best friend, Lily Cup
(Lily Cup Lorelei Tarleton), a criminal attorney.
Less than a year before the events in Mamma’s Moon, Gabe
and Peck wandered into Charlie’s Blue Note, a small jazz bar in a
side alley just off Frenchman Street, where the music was live and
mellow and the dancing warm and sensual.
Here they encountered Sasha and Lily Cup, and amid the music, the dancing,
the food, the flirting, and the cigar smoke, the four formed an
unusual and lasting friendship that would see them each through a
series of crises, disappointments, life-threatening situations, and
moments of great joy and satisfaction.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwKA-NvAoM?feature=player_embedded]
JEROME MARK ANTIL writes in several genres. He has been called a
“greatest generation’s Mark Twain,” a “write what you know
Ernest Hemingway,” and “a sensitive Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”
It’s been said his work reads like a Norman Rockwell painting.
Among his writing accomplishments, several titles in his The Pompey
Hollow Book Club historical fiction series about growing up in the
shadows of WWII have been honored. An ‘Authors and Writers’ Book
of the Year Award and ‘Writer of the Year’ at Syracuse University
for The Pompey Hollow Book Club novel; Hemingway, Three Angels, and
Me, won SILVER in the UK as second-best novel.
Foreword’s Book of the Year Finalist for The Book of Charlie – historical
fiction and The Long Stem is in the Lobby – nonfiction humor.
Library Journal selected Hemingway, Three Angels and Me for best
reads during Black History Month.
Before picking up the pen, Antil spent his professional career writing and
marketing for the business world. In this role, he lectured at
universities – Cornell, St. Edward’s, and Southern Methodist. His
inspirations have been John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, and Ernest
Hemingway.
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