80 Books Like Dixie City Jam

After I visited Sicily at 22 (the same age as Mariella in the book) and stayed with relatives in Siracusa, I fell in love with Sicily (and all of Italy) and wanted to know everything I could about it, its history, its customs, architecture, food, and especially to understand the collective psyche of its people. 

My grandmother was born in Sicily and never spoke English even after moving to the United States, and my uncles and father spent a good part of their childhoods in Catania, where the Sicily part of Becoming Mariella takes place. I had never before felt the deep longing of a cultural belonging, and this book, written in 1958, is one of the finest works of twentieth-century fiction (according to Daunt Books), and opened my eyes to the pride and richness of the Sicilian people and its aristocracy, their stubbornness and an understanding of how,… show more.

Everybody loves this book because it, of course, has become an international classic of literature and one of the best works F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, which takes the reader on a time-traveling secretive world of the upper-class set in New England life in the 1920s.

In F. Scott's work, we are casually and comfortably introduced to an America where new money met old money, and the tender tightrope one had to walk in order to vie for position, marriage, and peer acceptance in a world founded on wealth and prestige.    

When it comes to historical fiction, especially one set in Asia, James Clavell is the guy to beat (or at least match).

The story of Shogun unfolds in 17th-century, feudal Japan. An undisputedly exotic setting. A British ship is wrecked on its shores, and its stranded navigator must find his way through Japan's complex cultural and political dynamics. Meanwhile there are other Europeans seeking religious influence and commercial advantage.

Perhaps best of all, the characters are monumental and include one of the strongest and most courageous women in literature since Joan of Arc.

Read enough Cold War spy novels by John le Carré, and you can’t help but wonder, who is this gorgeous writer and how much of what he writes is grounded in historical fact. Then you read his memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, and see that le Carré  (the writer’s pen name) has been trying to sort all that out himself in his books.

Meet David John Moore Cornwell (John le Carré's real name), raised by his father, Ronnie Cornwell, and schooled in the art of espionage by the British Security Service (MI5) and Intelligence Service (MI6). What you get is source material for what you’d glimpsed (and suspected) all along in A Perfect Spy, Little Drummer Girl, Smiley’s People, and many others. Betrayal goes deep.

The troubled relationship between father and son plays out over a lifetime. And as a writer, you wonder, how much of me is embedded… show more.

All of James Burke's novels are my favorites. His plots constantly take you by surprise, and his characters drip with foibles and exotic passions. This book does not take place in New Orleans yet, but Mr. Burke seems to equally understand the heat, the intentions, the loneliness, and the nightmares of the Southwest border. I could not get enough of his colorful dialogue and poetical descriptions.

Though a seventh-generation Louisianian, I was born and raised in the northern portion of the state. When I decided to write about early New Orleans, I realized deep research would be required. The first book my local librarian recommended was Saxon’s Fabulous New Orleans.

I was enthralled, not least because I discovered he was also not a native of the city, though he lived in the French Quarter for many years and was instrumental in preserving many of its historic buildings from demolition.

With a style that immediately draws you in, this book is filled with pageantry and grandeur, personality, and rich detail, which makes researching the Vieux Carré a pleasure rather than a chore. 

This book provides an intimate look at Storyville, the legal New Orleans red-light district that operated in a grid of streets nestled between St. Louis Cemeteries no. 1 and 2 near the French Quarter from 1897 to 1917.

Although the book is a bit dated (it was published in 1974) and includes a few wild and unsubstantiated stories about certain historic New Orleans personalities, such as Marie Laveau, this mostly factual volume is a fascinating and detailed portrait of the "District," as Storyville was often called, and the colorful, sometimes tragic stories of the people who lived and worked there.

A young Louis Armstrong as an amateur detective – if that concept doesn’t draw you in, I’m not sure what will!

The year is 1919 and there’s a terrifying serial killer on the loose in New Orleans. This is the first installment in Celestin’s City Blues Quartet. I love all four books but The Axeman is probably my favourite because of the New Orleans vibe. You get jazz, mafia, Pinkerton detectives, crooked cops, and a taste of the macabre. 

This is a fitting companion to Ball’s earlier book Slaves in the Family, a meticulous account of his paternal ancestors’ slave-owning history and their biracial progeny.

In this book, Ball, a talented and engaging writer, dives deep into the buried story of a maternal forbearer in New Orleans, Constant Lecorgne, a working-class white creole. With novelistic flair, Ball takes us along with Lecorgne in his peregrinations through Louisiana’s violent and chaotic reactionary politics in the 1860s and 1870s. Ball faced a daunting challenge: to humanize Lecorgne without either sugarcoating his reprehensible behavior or forgiving him for it.

Few books I’ve read have so vividly captured the mentality of outspoken white supremacist “foot soldier.” I was often repelled by Lecorgne, but I wanted to keep reading. This is an essential book if we’re to begin to understand why ordinary white men were willing, even eager, to participate in the racist counter-revolution… show more.

I often wonder about the generations of people who lived in my house before me, but for better or worse, that context is lost to history. Conversely, Sarah M. Broom is privy to 60 years of intimate history of her childhood home in New Orleans East.

Making a home is an act of love; sustaining one hinges on determination, work, and community. It also helps to be treated like you matter by those in power. Broom’s tribute to her tenacious mother and family, who kept their home through times of security and lack thereof, only to lose it to Hurricane Katrina, is stunning. The house still exerts a tumultuous pull on Broom and her family. The crossing threads of love and heartbreak are sewn through this vivid, haunting memoir.