The Feast of All Saints

A large, plummy, handsomely mounted tale of love and danger in pre-Civil War New Orleans - centering on the uniquely stratified and beleaguered society of "free people of color." Likely material for Mandingo-style exploitation? Perhaps. But Rice carefully skirts quadroon/white-planter sensationalism in this warmhearted view of desperately proud people fighting for their dignity as their rights and privileges shrink under white domination. Her well-chosen hero: young Marcel Ste. Marie, whose father is white plantation-owner Phillippe Ferronnaire - "protector" of Marcel's mother Cecile, herself the child of a Haitian slave and a French planter. Marcel at 14 is rather a dandy: bright, infatuated with learning, with his dream of a Paris education. And, to Marcel's joy, caustic writer Christophe - the idol of the neighborhood now returned home from years in Paris - accepts him as a student in a new school (despite the fact that Marcel has been discovered in bed with Christophe's beautiful, slightly mad mother). True, there are wounding recognitions for Marcel to face on all sides: glimpses of the slave market (free people of color also own slaves); his lovely sister Marie's dilemma (she could pass for white and should marry "up" but is in love with dark-skinned Richard); and Marcel's own tawdry bigotry - at its worst in his reluctance to court Anna Bella, a childhood friend with African features. Still, he seems to be coping, finding his own way. Then, however, Phillippe dies in debt, and ugly revelations lead to violence that nearly destroys Marie, Richard, and Marcel. And finally, wiser and settled in his vision, Marcel will turn away from Christophe and return to Anna Bella, who has by now borne a white man's child. . . . Admittedly the characters here have the familiar dimensions of pop-fiction standbys - heart-of-gold women, stony men, vibrating youths. But Rice shades her portraits with care and craft; and her hothouse world of feverish beings is all of a piece. So, like Interview with a Vampire (1976) - a commercially tailored front-runner that also manages to find some fresh energy in an overworked genre. (Kirkus Reviews)