Corina's Way

by Rod Davis

Corina Youngblood, a voudou priestess, Christian minister, and dispenser of botanica finds an ally in acting prep school chaplain Gus Houston in her fight against the Cubans who are moving in on her territory in New Orleans.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2003

About the author

Award-winning author Rod Davis’s latest novel, "The Life of Kim and the Behavior of Men: Human Bondage in the After-market of War" (Madville Publishing, 2024), has been described as “a rare find of a novel that reveals the truths of the lives of American soldiers stationed in Korea during the Vietnam War era with gritty realism, authenticity, and compassion.” And as “Thoughtful, with dark, more-than-entertaining humor and a good, sad ending. This is a better read than Catch-22.”
A Kirkus Featured Review describes it as “A moving and well-written war drama.” Davis was named as Winner, Contemporary Fiction, International Impact Award, June 2024, for the novel. He was also ranked as a Finalist military fiction, in the 7th annual American Fiction Awards, American Book Fest, 2024

Davis is the recipient of the Fiction Award in the Inaugural 2000-2005 PEN/Southwest Book Awards 2005 for "Corina’s Way" (NewSouth Books, 2003). Kirkus Reviews calls the debut novel “a spicy bouillabaisse, New Orleans-set, in the tradition of Flannery O’Connor or John Kennedy Toole: a welcome romp, told with traditional Southern charm.”
Davis’s second novel, "South, America" (NewSouth Books, 2014), received strong critical praise as “a triumph of Southern noir,” that “brings to mind the Dave Robicheaux novels of James Lee Burke” and “Southern history and its persistent burdens on the present.”
The sequel, "East of Texas, West of Hell" (NewSouth Books, 2020), is labeled by Publishers Weekly as a “crime powerhouse—a maelstrom of meth dealing, human trafficking, and white supremacy….The hardscrabble prose sets the perfect tone, and the characters are reliably complex. Davis is a great guide through gritty Southern territory.”

He also is author of "American Voudou: Journey into a Hidden World" (UNT Press, 1998; paperback, 2000), a study of West African religion in the United States. It was selected as one of the “Exceptional Books of 1998” by Bookman Book Review Syndicate.
A six-part series on the Texas-Mexico border, “A Rio Runs Through It,” appears in The Best American Travel Writing 2002, the annual anthology from Houghton-Mifflin. “Her Dark Places,” on the life and death of writer Kathryn Marshall, was included in Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2015 in The Best American Essays 2016. His PEN/Texas-award-winning essay, “The Fate of the Texas Writer,” is included in Fifty Years of the Texas Observer (Trinity University Press, 2004), and his Texas Monthly story, “Wal-Marts Across Texas,” is included in True Stories by David Byrne.

He served on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and of PEN America. National professional honors have included a fellowship at the Yaddo Colony, a Eugene V. Debs Award for investigative reporting, a Lowell Thomas Award (Bronze) for personal commentary on post-Katrina New Orleans, and Gold and Silver Awards for feature writing from the City/Regional Magazine Association.
His work has appeared in publications including Southern Magazine, Boston Globe Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Men’s Journal, Texas Monthly, Destination Discovery, The Texas Observer, The Progressive, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Biography, Yankee, Coastal Living, Texas Parks & Wildlife, Old Farmer’s Almanac, Bon Appetit, and Salvation South.

Davis served as executive editor at Cooking Light, a Time, Inc. magazine, and is a former editor of the critically acclaimed The Texas Observer and also a former editor of American Way, the former magazine of American Airlines. He has been a senior editor at Houston City and D Magazine, a reporter for The Rocky Mountain News, and an editor at The Associated Press, as well as associate director of the Texas Film Commission and travel editor at the San Antonio Express-News. Formerly managing editor of the Teaching Tolerance project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, he launched and directed The Texas A&M University Syst

Reviews

[Jadzia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible read.

The female characters are all so obviously written by a man, it's ridiculous, and the sex scenes in the book are super rushed. I understand not everyone is good at writing that stuff but if you don't want to commit to it, just leave it out altogether.
There are also multiple instances in which the n-word is used (pretty sure the author is white) and gay people are only spoken of in a derogatory manner.
Lastly, the writing is very mediocre and I find the style inconsistent. The "climax" of the story would fit better in a movie than in a book. Also, the ending is super unclear and confusing.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was nothing compelling about this book. Usually I don't like books because they offend me in some way. This was completely non-offense and frankly, rather boring.

Too many characters without development or apparent motivation. The story was frazzled and didn't hold together well.

Overall, not worth spending any more time on.

[Claire MCNELAN · Rating 5 out of 5]

mmmmmm jjjajaja

[Rev Octovar · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is horrible. Seemingly just an excuse for a racist writer to use the n-word repetitively and place a woman of color in VERY sexually graphic scenes. Gross. I can't believe this dreck is "taught" in some schools. The book as a whole is not very well written. It's hard to discern which character is thinking or saying what, and the whole thing kind of melds into a floppy "who cares" at the end.