LOUISIANA is the brilliant and eagerly awaited third novel from the much acclaimed novelist, Erna Brodber, also author of Jane And Louisa Will Soon Come Home and Myal. Louisiana, her latest novel, is an artistic tour de force. It continues her original search to seek means to depict in fiction the spirit of the past which is also an organic part of our present. The novel begins in the 1930s. Ella, the main protagonist, is an African-American with Caribbean family connections. She is a young anthropologist at a northern university and is given a tape recorder to facilitate her research on folk life in Louisiana. Mammy, her primary informant, dies before the project is completed. Beyond the grave Mammy sends messages through the metaphysical medium of tape. The academic, Ella, is challenged to really listen to her informant. Through this means of spiritual communication she gradually uncovers the life history of Mammy, her friend Lowly and she also learns about herself, Ella. The interconnecting levels of reality and place are underpinned by Brodber's poetic and revealing prose style. The novel celebrates the magico-religious cultural traditions of hoodoo, conjure, obeah and myal. ABOUT THE AUTHOR ERNA BRODBER was born in Jamaica in 1940. She is a respected historical sociologist and her published works include Abandonment of Children in Jamaica (1974), A-study of Yard!: in the City of Kingston (1975) and Perceptions of Caribbean Women (1982). She worked at the Institute of Social and Economic Research in Mona, Jamaica, from 1975 to 1983. She is at present a freelance writer, researcher and lecturer. Erna Brodber also writes poetry. Both her first two novels Jane And Louisa Will Soon Come Home (1980) and Myal (1988) have been highly acclaimed (see inside at end of book for critical comments). Myal was the Caribbean and Canadian Regional Winner in the 1989 Commonwealth Writers prize.