A jazzman, a wharf worker, a prostitute, all murdered. Wrists punctured, their bodies impossibly drained of blood. What connects them? Why are they rising as ghosts?Marie Levant, the great-great granddaughter of the Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, knows better than anyone New Orleans's brutal past -- the legacy of slavery, poverty, racism, and sexism -- and as a doctor at Charity Hospital's ER, she treats its current victims.When she sleeps, she dreams of blood. Rain, never ending. The river is rising and the yellow moon warns of an ancient evil -- an African vampire --wazimamoto-- a spirit created by colonial oppression.The struggle becomes personal, as thewazimamotois intent on destroying her and all the Laveau descendants. Marie fights to protect her daughter, lover, and herself from thewazimamoto'sseductive assault on both body and spirit.Echoing with the heartache and triumph of the African-American experience, the soulful rhythms of jazz, and the horrors of racial oppression,Yellow Moongives us an unforgettable heroine -- sexy, vulnerable, and mysterious -- in Marie Levant, while it powerfully evokes a city on the brink of catastrophe.Yellow Moonis part two of the New Orleans trilogy that began withVoodoo Season-- magical realist fiction that takes the legend of the voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, as imagined by Jewell Parker Rhodes in the bestsellingVoodoo Dreams,into the present day.

Jewell Parker Rhodes is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award in fiction. A professor of creative writing at Arizona State University, she lives in Scottsdale and Boston.