My wife’s parents lived in Wilson, Louisiana. Wilson is on the east side of the Mississippi, north of Baton Rouge and 13 miles south of the Mississippi State Line. The town was so small it didn’t have a pay phone. But you could use the phone at the general store if you wanted to make a local call and you were white.

The Creole Gardens made him feel like he should be single, drunk and slightly depraved. The lock on the wrought iron gate didn’t latch, the bananas from the tree in the middle of the courtyard lay rotting on the ground and the door to their rooms was swollen and needed to be lifted just a touch to pass over the sill without scraping.