The Azaleas

Dumped by her lover, no money, no credit, no job, facing eviction. Karla Whitmore hits rock bottom. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, she has reached a dead end, nowhere to turn, no place to go. Then a chance encounter at Caf du Monde- Albert Monsant, a suave, sophisticated uptown lawyer, offers Karla a job selling real estate, dangling the prospect of big money under her nose. Suspicious, but lacking options, Karla accepts the challenge. Mary Bravelle, the inheritor of The Azaleas Plantation, arrives from France to arrange for its sale. While visiting the French Quarter, unexpected shots ring out from St. Louis Cathedral. An accident? Hardly Arriving at The Azaleas, Karla is pitted against a roaming ghost, a good-old-boy network and a past culture that hangs on and won't let go. She soon realizes that the impediment to a sale is not the real estate, but the owner's conflicts. Who wants Mary eliminated? And how does the past and its mysterious happenings fit in?

Katie Wainwright, a native of Cuba and a resident of Hammond, Louisiana, owned a real estate agency for many years before retiring to write and travel. The Azaleas, a real estate mystery set in a Louisiana plantation, explores with gentle humor and deep insight the mystique that is the South. She is presently working on Pohainake Parish, a satirical view at local Louisiana politics. Her two previous novels, historical fiction, Cuba on my Mind and the sequel Secuestro, published by the University of West Alabama’s Livingston Press highlighted life in Cuba before and during the Castro revolution. The third volume in the series, tentatively named Perseverance is scheduled for release in the fall.