82 Books Like The Magic of Marie Laveau

Wise Women. Ancestral Worship. Charms and rituals: Thank you—to author, performer, and ritual priestess, Luisah Teish—for this reminder that “our foremothers knew things that modern science is still struggling with.”

Originally published in 1985, this eclectic mix of memoir, spiritual teachings, and practices is a delightful and accessible road map to New Orleans Voudou, which, like Jamablaya—“a spicy dish with many fine ingredients cooked together”—blends the practices of African ancestor reverence, Native American earth worship, and European Christian occultism into one tradition.

Reading this book, I find myself pulled into the mysteries of the natural and spiritual worlds, and the centuries-old traditions of the ancestors, whose voices echo through time, guiding us and blending with our own.

In these seventeen essays we meet the Yoruba river goddess Òsun, the mighty shapeshifter whose name means source, as in “the source of a river, a people, or of children...that which runs, seeps, flows, moves as water does.”

Here is the role model I’ve been hungering for! Not only a river and fertility goddess, Òsun is a holder and conveyor of political, economic, divinatory, maternal, natural, and therapeutic power; a larger-than-life Mother who is both spiritual and material, sweet and strong; a multi-faceted role model who shifts shape with every turn of her river. Immersed in her stories, I find myself leaning into those places where I, too, am fluid, my identity too vast to fit into any one shape or box.

What a delight to cozy up with the fictional island of this novel, an imagined liminal space on the border of Georgia and South Carolina, we are told “got spit out from the mouth of God, and when it fell to the earth it brought along an army of stars.” Even more delightful, we are told that when He tried to reach down and scoop them back up, He found Himself shaking hands with “the greatest conjure woman on earth.”

Thus we meet the “great, great, grand Mother” of Willow Springs, the archetypal first mother who could “grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of the lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot,” and heal “the wounds of every creature.” I love how deeply feminist, mystical, and immersive this novel is: a page-turner I return to whenever I want to… show more.

As someone who writes about discovering Santería as an adult, I was enchanted to read how Hernández stumbles upon its rituals through the eyes of a child. In her father’s workroom, a gray rock with cowrie shells for eyes and a mouth that sits on a clay plate filled with candies becomes the author’s enticing introduction to Santería’s gatekeeper deity, Eleggua. In the kitchen, women read cups of water that ferry messages between the living and the santos and the dead.

“There’s nothing odd about any of this, because it has always been this way,” Hernández tells us, illuminating the ways her young self navigates her identity among the wisdom and complexities of the aunties and mother who raise her, and the “women who know” they call upon to help them find their way.

A unique city such as New Orleans should have unique guidebooks. Fear Dat is just that.

While the book gives the usual tourist information about hotels, restaurants, shops, and tours, it has so much more. Fear Dat is full of stories of the cemeteries, Voodoo, ghosts, vampires, and more.

Whether it’s your first visit or your twentieth, this book will get you ready for a trip to the Crescent City.

Written by accomplished historian Carolyn Morrow Long, A New Orleans Voudou Priestess tells the true story of Voodoo queen Marie Laveau based on extensive archival research.

In telling her readers about this Creole woman of color who was deeply embedded in the culture of New Orleans in the 1800s, we learn the real story of a woman who was often glorified and denigrated by the press and by local authors who wrote many fantastical tales about her life misleading many about her character and her religion. 

Hurston’s Mules and Men is a classic work in which the author returns to her hometown, Eatonville, Florida, in the late 1920s to conduct anthropological research. 

In the work Hurston captures the complex texture of social life in a fully incorporated African American community. The result is a rich mix of character descriptions, masterfully crafted dialogues, and a collection of stories that reflect powerfully the deep knowledge and profound wisdom of Eatonville’s cast of characters. 

Robert Crais' private detectives, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, inhabit the same traffic-choked freeways as Harry Bosch, but in a much brighter key. I'm drawn to Elvis' non-stop banter, which is often laugh-out-loud funny. Tough-guy Joe has a gift for understatement that makes him a perfect foil for Elvis. In Voodoo River, Elvis falls in love with Lucy Chenier. (His wiseguy courtship style is something you shouldn't try at home.) The novel's set in Louisiana, where Crais grew up. Elvis is investigating a blackmail scheme run by Milt Rossier, a wily ex-con backed up by a gun thug named Leroy; Rene, a 400-pound brain-dead monster; and a vicious snapping turtle named Luther. Elvis is not intimidated, but he wisely calls in Joe to improve the odds for the inevitable confrontation.

In a similar vein to False Witness, Litwin not only exposes the shortcomings of the Garrison investigation into the JFK murder but in the process uncovers the fraud and false information that are cited to support some of the currently popular conspiracy theories about the assassination. It is filled with new information from Litwin’s own extensive research.

Imagine a political maverick rejecting the leader and crusade he’d long supported, along with “the Lost Cause,” a credo subscribed to by millions (and generations) of unreconstructed white Southerners. James Longstreet, one of Robert E. Lee’s top generals, I learned, was not one of them.

That surprised me, as he was fully devoted to preserving slavery and supporting secession during the war but became a staunch Unionist afterward, even working with Black officials in his newly adopted home state of Louisiana. If you’ve ever wondered why there are no memorial statues on courthouse lawns to this rebel general, read this book to learn why.

I found this biography of “The Confederate General Who Defied the South” to be well-written, revelatory, and absorbing. It challenges long-held views of the Confederate cause.