At the turn of the century, the view people outside of New Orleans got of the city was through the eyes of journalist and author George W. Cable. His writings portrayed a tropical European city nestled on the banks of an American river still teeming with the literary, artistic, and social developments of a late Renaissance. In his own romance with Louisiana, Cable came upon many stories written by its denizens and assisted these authors in finding places to publish their works. There were some, however, which Cable would not send out of state. These stories he kept for himself, some of which can be found in his work Strange True Stories of Louisiana.

"They are mine by right of discovery," writes Cable. "From various necessities of the case I am sometimes the story-teller, and sometimes, in the reader's interest, have to abridge; but I add no fact and trim naught of value away. Here are no unconfessed 'restorations,' not one. In time, place, circumstance, in every essential feature, I give them as I got them-strange stories that truly happened, all partly, some wholly, in Louisiana.

Strange True Stories of Louisiana is Cable's compilation of seven unusual, factual accounts of life and history in the area. They include tales of two French sisters who made the dangerous trek to the unsettled lands of North Louisiana at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Focusing on New Orleans, Cable adds the story of "The 'Haunted House' in Royal Street," which spurs the imaginations of ghost hunters more than a century after its original writing. In its first published form, there is also a diary account from the Civil War of a Union woman trapped behind the battle lines.

George W. Cable is also the author of Old Creole Days, available from Pelican.

STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA
By George W. Cable
368 pp. 4¼ x 7
ISBN: 1-56554-038-7
EAN: 978-1-56554-038-5 pb