Books - Book Review - Midnight on Julia St - Ciji Ware

I received a copy of this novel from Sourcebooks.

This novel is set in pre-Katrina New Orleans; it's a reprint, but many of the locations described by Ware still exist. The neighborhoods and buildings that she talks about are close to the banks of the Mississippi River and weren't wiped out during the Katrina.

 Corlis McCullough is a television reporter who moves to New Orleans from California. She doesn't realize that her ancestors have ties to the city, until she starts getting visions and discusses them with an aunt who knows the family genealogy.

But, the visions are not figments of Corlis' imagination; they are events that really occurred around the 400 block of Canal St., the main business street which divides the "New" New Orleans (the American side) from the "Old" New Orleans (descendants of the original French and Spanish settlers and the free people of color). The time frame of the visions is the 1830s.

At first, she is disturbed by them, but she enlists the new friends to find out what the visions mean. She is also researching the proposed razing of a historic building that housed businessed that used to be owned by free African-American many years before the Civil War.

I took this novel to Atlanta, when I visited my friend. I was also supposed to be studying for two finals. I would pick up the book as a reward for studying for certain amount of time, and my friend thought that I was spending all my time reading instead of studying. I left my copy for her to read; since she has a young family, she has to be selective about her reading. I highly recommended the book to her.

The novel deals with the razing of the Sanlin building.

Behind this modernist facade, there is an older building. Here's an article that describes the history of the building:


Ware was able to capture a historical event in an interesting manner and also combine it with a modern story. I had a hard time putting it down, and if you like works with a bit of the supernatural and history, you will enjoy it also.