Forbidden Fruit [antikvár]

Prologue Vacherie, Louisiana 1959 Hope Pierron sat in the window seat of her third floor bedroom and gazed out at the Mississippi River. She smiled to herself, anxiousness and excitement coiling in the pit of her gut. She controlled both with icy determination. She had waited all her life for this day; now that it had come, she would not reveal herself by appearing too eager. She pressed a hand to the sun-warmed glass, wishing she could break it, leap out and fly to freedom. How many times during her fourteen years, years spent trapped within the red walls of this house, had she wished the same thing? To be a bird, to leap from the window and fly to freedom? After today, she wouldn't need to wish for wings. After today, she would be free of this house. Of the stigma of sin. Free of her mother and all who she had known. Today she would be reborn. Hope closed her eyes, thinking of her future, yet picturing her past and this hated house, instead. The Pierron House had been a fixture on River Road, a part of the culture of southem Louisiana since the summer of 1917. That had been just before the demise of Storyville, when her grandmother Camellia, the first Pierron madam, had moved her daughter and her girls here. Surprisingly, neither hue nor cry had erupted then, nor when the gentlemen began calling. All these years later, this .11 ¦ • I J ¦ I I . 11 1 / ; I I ' . f '