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On Sunday in the middle of a downpour, my husband, my hero, was outside digging a trench to re-route water away from the front walk. He ended up in the last few minutes placing a piece of plywood over the growing puddle and covering it with industrial rugs from his office. He saved the day. People began arriving.
They came to greet the newest author in our family, Anne L. Simon, my mother-in-law. Following a degree from Wellesley, law school at Yale, a move to Louisiana, a law degree from LSU, practicing law with her husband, raising three smart children, running a successful campaign for judge, acting as a district judge, teaching at LSU law school, and serving as an ad-hoc judge for the Louisiana Supreme Court, Anne decided she wanted to be an author. Through grit and determination, not to mention high intelligence and a gift for writing, she published her first crime novel, Blood in the Cane Field.
Anne Simon signs copies of Blood in the Cane Field
Those of you from Louisiana will love this book for its fine attention to the Louisiana landscape. You may even recognize a few of the characters. Others will enjoy the details of the process of law. And others will enjoy the relationship between John Clark, the protagonist and public defender for a mixed race boy in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Medley Butterfield, a Mississippi girl down on her luck. Whatever your reason for reading, you will not be disappointed.
The book release party was a success. Minga, our grandmother name for Anne, sold and signed over 40 books. Of course, as she says, “These were my nears and dears. They had to buy it.” My prediction is that word will spread beyond the nears and dears, beyond the bayou, and even beyond the Mississippi River. The best part of this success is that she has nearly completed book 2, Blood in the Lake. So if you get hooked on Anne Simon’s writing, there will be more. In her 80th decade, this lawyer/mother/judge/author is not close to stopping.
I was proud to greet soggy people at my door and say, “Food is to your left. The author is to your right.”
Click the image to find the book on Amazon.
Judge Lori Landry says Blood in the Cane Field is a great beach read!
Reflections on the Teche 