A Lyle Saxon Reader
Written by Lyle Saxon and edited by James Michael Warner
Second-place winner of the 2019 IndieReader Discovery Award for Fiction!
Lyle Chambers Saxon earned his writing chops while reporting for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. As a young man in the early 1920s, Saxon pursued an exhausting newspaper career, writing the stories and character sketches that gave him the skills to produce his later classics of Louisiana literature, such as Fabulous New Orleans, Children of Strangers and Lafitte the Pirate.
First published 1919-1923 in the Times-Picayune, the thirty-nine tales that comprise A Lyle Saxon Reader include short stories, preservationist essays and character sketches of the Saxon’s beloved city.
Most of the works in this book have been out of print since they were originally published. In this rediscovered collection of Lyle Saxon’s early short stories and character sketches, readers will take great pleasure in seeing in print for the first time in nearly a century some of the author’s early classics such as The Last Reunion and Who Would Hunt for Spanish Doubloons and Pieces of Eight?
Also among the stories in this volume are metaphorical visions of Saxon’s childhood, when Saxon was abandoned by his father and raised by his mother and grandparents. He draws other stories from contemporary headlines or images of antebellum gentility.
In each, Saxon pays special attention to the odd quirks expressed by that most-honored of New Orleans species, the French Quarter character.
ISBN 978-0-692-14152-6
A Lyle Saxon Reader can be ordered at your local bookstore or online.