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Writers Choice Press, 1998
Reviewed by Sally Roddom
Sarah Beth LaBranche lives in Louisiana at the turn of the nineteenth
century. As a child she regularly listens to her father beat and assault
her mother in his drunken rages. As she starts to mature, her father's eye
turns to her and Sarah runs away to New Orleans. She quickly falls into
the hands of some unscrupulous brothel owners where she is brutally raped
by one of the clients - her virginity bringing in a high price. Once her
innocence is gone she is thrown out onto the streets where she learns to
survive by doing the only thing she now knows - whoring. Eventually she
arrives at the point where she feels she can go on no longer and she sits
in the gutter contemplating suicide.
From the point of despair she can only go up, and her luck changes at this
point. The opportunity comes to improve herself, and with that improvement
comes the chance of a change in lifestyle. Reluctant to desert the woman
who rescues her, Sarah Beth ends up leading a double life. She meets
Frank, a doctor, and soon falls head over heels in love with him. Now
Sarah Beth is terrified that Frank will discover the truth about her
background.
The character of Sarah Beth grows throughout the book. At the beginning I
found it very difficult to understand her dialect, but as her character
becomes more educated her speech becomes clearer to understand. A very
clever ploy by Channing Hayden to demonstrate the growth of his main
character. I really came to care for Sarah Beth, and admire her for rising
above everything that was thrown against her. Whilst MAGDALENES is
primarily a romance, it also gives an historical insight into the seedy
side of New Orleans, and the depravity of humans. There is also a medical
subplot in the form of Sarah assisting Frank to find a cure for yellow
fever during an epidemic. Channing Hayden has cleverly combined factual
people and events with fiction and is not afraid to portray the worst of
the underlife of New Orleans using some shocking descriptions. Sarah Beth
makes mistakes, but despite all she goes through, she is not a cruel
person, and fights for the rights of those who are less fortunate than
herself, as she searches for her own place in the world.
June 2006
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