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Higher Ground
Five months after a hurricane has devastated New Orleans, native Nicole Naquin is home for the first time in decades. She's living next door to her mother Miss Gertie, an elderly evacuee from Lakeview reduced to pushing pills in a French Quarter gay bar. On the day Nicole's brother is killed in a drive-by shooting, she crashes the car into her high-school sweetheart's FEMA trailer, igniting a sexy romance among the ruins. Homicide detective Vinnie Panarello, himself charged with murder for a shooting after the storm, is assigned to the drive-by case, and works at furious cross-purposes with hippie sleuth Gary Cherry to find the brother's killer. In the process, they uncover much more than either expected.
This award-winning comic noir novel is a romp though a gritty city fighting for its life, from the mayoral election to Mardi Gras, Lakeview to the French Quarter, the Garden District to Parish Prison. It's a classic story of individual redemption amid collective destruction, one in which crooked politicians rule the day, leaving displaced home owners, bereaved mothers, drag queens, and illegal immigrants to band together for survival and justice. The real protagonist-the people of New Orleans-won't be fooled any longer. As Miss Gertie says, "I'm moving to higher ground."
This award-winning comic noir novel is a romp though a gritty city fighting for its life, from the mayoral election to Mardi Gras, Lakeview to the French Quarter, the Garden District to Parish Prison. It's a classic story of individual redemption amid collective destruction, one in which crooked politicians rule the day, leaving displaced home owners, bereaved mothers, drag queens, and illegal immigrants to band together for survival and justice. The real protagonist-the people of New Orleans-won't be fooled any longer. As Miss Gertie says, "I'm moving to higher ground."
- GenresFiction
289 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 24, 2011
2 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
James Nolan
73 books14 followersJames Nolan's latest book is the award-winning collection of short stories, PERPETUAL CARE. His two books of poetry are WHY I LIVE IN THE FOREST and WHAT MOVES IS NOT THE WIND, both from Wesleyan. He is a regular contributor to BOULEVARD, and recent stories have appeared in SHENANDOAH, ARKANSAS REVIEW, and the anthology NEW ORLEANS NOIR. A New Orleans native, he lives in the French Quarter and directs the Loyola Writing Institute.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 25, 2017
I write this while wearing my New Orleans streetcar t-shirt, "A Streetcar Named Inspire" it says. And I think through my own Hurricane Katrina experience. As of this writing only one other person has reviewed this book. Mostly I agree with K. N. Grieshaber, and I have marked that review as helpful. I cannot be as enthusiastic. Had I the choice this review would have 3 ½ stars.
Higher ground begins with a drive by shooting. These three pages may contain the best writing in the book. The ending is almost as engaging. Mr Nolan is a recognized poet and short story writer. This is a good first novel, but not a great first novel.
A double murder is the driving device for this novel, however this not exactly a murder mystery. It almost does not matter who "done it". We find out, but who killed is less important that who was killed and most important are the lives of those left behind.
This may be the correct order of priority in a murder, except that the previously promising back male victim is almost lost and nearly forgotten.
Most of the novel contains themes and references that almost any New Orleans Katrina survivor will understand. From the thinly, Very Thinly references to then Mayor Ray Nagin, and the Now Mayor Mark Landrieu, passing references to Chinese drywall serious discussions of French Quarter characters, and the vagaries of Good Job Brownie's FEMA about the only N'atchly N'awlinz things I missed were coffee and chicory and the Camilla Grill.
This is not a plot driven book. We are asked to care about the immediate family of the white victim: Marky, Miss Gertie his drug pushing mom (she is banned from a French Quarter Gay Bar for pushing dope, this makes her funny?) a sister with a preference for married lovers, an alcoholic aunt.....
Part of my problem with this book is that the simple reviewer type character summaries will make almost everyone in this book seem unsympathetic. If you can accept: that drug pushers can be good guys; that casual hookups by married people up can form the basis lasting love and that New Orleans Police officers can be accused of murder and still be decent people, you are ready to appreciate this book.
America does not often see a major city flooded out. People on the US North East Coast, tragically, have some idea of what the Katrina experience meant to those in New Orleans. So perhaps what Mr. Nolan best achieves in this book is an idea something like:
New Orleans is a place of contradictions and unexpected people. The destruction that was Hurricane Katrina brought out many of these contradictions, but did nothing to end the essential unique qualities of New Orleans. (You can squirt in all the almond cream vanilla you want, most of America has no idea what good coffee is)
It is good to read a New Orleans book that gets details right: geography, social divisions - New Orleans realy can be such a small town that unlikely people will have known each other for years...Mr Nolan makes a good run at capturing frustration to the point that all you can do is laugh, or get drunk that was the months after the hurricane...
But...
I think this is a near hit; an almost. If for no other reason than this book may fully resonate only with readers who "Know what it means to miss New Orleans".
There is much here to admire. I will look for future novels by James Nolan. Meantime I cannot muster the enthusiasm to highly recommend this book.
Higher ground begins with a drive by shooting. These three pages may contain the best writing in the book. The ending is almost as engaging. Mr Nolan is a recognized poet and short story writer. This is a good first novel, but not a great first novel.
A double murder is the driving device for this novel, however this not exactly a murder mystery. It almost does not matter who "done it". We find out, but who killed is less important that who was killed and most important are the lives of those left behind.
This may be the correct order of priority in a murder, except that the previously promising back male victim is almost lost and nearly forgotten.
Most of the novel contains themes and references that almost any New Orleans Katrina survivor will understand. From the thinly, Very Thinly references to then Mayor Ray Nagin, and the Now Mayor Mark Landrieu, passing references to Chinese drywall serious discussions of French Quarter characters, and the vagaries of Good Job Brownie's FEMA about the only N'atchly N'awlinz things I missed were coffee and chicory and the Camilla Grill.
This is not a plot driven book. We are asked to care about the immediate family of the white victim: Marky, Miss Gertie his drug pushing mom (she is banned from a French Quarter Gay Bar for pushing dope, this makes her funny?) a sister with a preference for married lovers, an alcoholic aunt.....
Part of my problem with this book is that the simple reviewer type character summaries will make almost everyone in this book seem unsympathetic. If you can accept: that drug pushers can be good guys; that casual hookups by married people up can form the basis lasting love and that New Orleans Police officers can be accused of murder and still be decent people, you are ready to appreciate this book.
America does not often see a major city flooded out. People on the US North East Coast, tragically, have some idea of what the Katrina experience meant to those in New Orleans. So perhaps what Mr. Nolan best achieves in this book is an idea something like:
New Orleans is a place of contradictions and unexpected people. The destruction that was Hurricane Katrina brought out many of these contradictions, but did nothing to end the essential unique qualities of New Orleans. (You can squirt in all the almond cream vanilla you want, most of America has no idea what good coffee is)
It is good to read a New Orleans book that gets details right: geography, social divisions - New Orleans realy can be such a small town that unlikely people will have known each other for years...Mr Nolan makes a good run at capturing frustration to the point that all you can do is laugh, or get drunk that was the months after the hurricane...
But...
I think this is a near hit; an almost. If for no other reason than this book may fully resonate only with readers who "Know what it means to miss New Orleans".
There is much here to admire. I will look for future novels by James Nolan. Meantime I cannot muster the enthusiasm to highly recommend this book.
April 26, 2023
I picked up a copy of this on a recent trip to New Orleans and glad I did. Often times, local interest books picked while traveling prove a little deficient in terms of how they compare to titles aimed at a national or international audience. This was not the case with Higher Ground. It held together very well as a mystery, a light romance, travelogue and as a platform for authorial philosophizing on the past, present and future of the Crescent City. There’s even some legend/myth/supernatural stuff thrown in, a must I suppose, if you want any modern publisher to consider printing one’s book. As a tourist reader, the book was rich with references to the French Quarter, which is where most of the action takes place. There are references to Greater New Orleans, Louisiana and the region too. The narrative takes turns delivering a web of interrelated stories involving its characters. There is a double murder at the onset followed by a grizzlier ritual murder. Much of the tale revolves around the solving the mysteries. There is a re-united pair of lovers trying to rebuild their lives anew in the recently Katrina ravaged city. There are dope dealers, drag queens and sinister psychologists as well. I’d say the book compares favorably to the Savannah love letter Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Fans of HBO’s Treme may also enjoy this compelling yarn.
May 23, 2023
This atmospheric book was enchanting at first; less so as the story progressed. If you want to feel the aftermath of Katrina, this is as good a place as any. But if you want a solid, believable plot line, you may be a little disappointed.
June 2, 2018
New Orleans writers are a bit funky, like Native American writers--just a different way they write about the world. Good though, funny, but in a noir way, which i have difficulty with (noir).
November 4, 2018
Picked this up at Garden District Book Shop & enjoyed it greatly. Like Maupin’s Tales of the City, done as a post-Katrina French Quarter murder mystery, filled with love for New Orleans.
October 5, 2021
This was a fun New Orleans book. Takes place after Katrina which is always a bit challenging to read but I loved the characters and miss them after finishing. Definitely a book to check out.
April 17, 2013
Nolan's novel perfectly captures the characters of New Orleans in a way few other writers have, most obviously John Kennedy Toole and Poppy Z. Bright's restaurant series. His mix of the comedy of the characters with the mystery plot thread in the context of postdiluvian New Orleans works is a brilliant attempt to lift the Katrina story out of the realm of pathos.
I have to wonder if establishing the crime upfront, rather than several chapters in, might make the book more compelling to readers outside New Orleans, to draw then into the story before launching into the tragic-comedy of the Katrina setting without relegating the book to the Mystery section at Barnes & Noble.
In the end he captures the point in time perfectly, relying on the unsolved murder to propel the reader along on a romp through the sort of characters that made Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces a Raelasian classic. I think the comparisons to Toole are at once apt (in Nolan hilarious characters) and a bit of a stretch. Instead of taking exaggeration to the heights of Toole, he gives us a more realistic and still profoundly comic portrait of New Orleans types that makes the Katrina story more palatable andI hope as compelling as I found it to a world (local and abroad in America) suffering from Katrina burnout.
Dave Eggers told the audience at the Tennessee Williams Festival two years ago he believe there were a hundred Katrina novels waiting to be written (and the list is well started, and no one except a graduate student working on his thesis could make it through the entire list on Wikipedia ). I think Nolan points the way forward better than anything else I've read.
I have to wonder if establishing the crime upfront, rather than several chapters in, might make the book more compelling to readers outside New Orleans, to draw then into the story before launching into the tragic-comedy of the Katrina setting without relegating the book to the Mystery section at Barnes & Noble.
In the end he captures the point in time perfectly, relying on the unsolved murder to propel the reader along on a romp through the sort of characters that made Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces a Raelasian classic. I think the comparisons to Toole are at once apt (in Nolan hilarious characters) and a bit of a stretch. Instead of taking exaggeration to the heights of Toole, he gives us a more realistic and still profoundly comic portrait of New Orleans types that makes the Katrina story more palatable andI hope as compelling as I found it to a world (local and abroad in America) suffering from Katrina burnout.
Dave Eggers told the audience at the Tennessee Williams Festival two years ago he believe there were a hundred Katrina novels waiting to be written (and the list is well started, and no one except a graduate student working on his thesis could make it through the entire list on Wikipedia ). I think Nolan points the way forward better than anything else I've read.
March 4, 2012
James Nolan's previous collection of short stories, Perpetual Care, was much better. The sometimes funny and often sad portrayals of the lost souls that inhabit New Orlean's French Quarter are tough to carry through as characters in a novel, but he comes close to carrying it off very well in this, a murder mystery light set against the post-Katrina impossibilities those who came back faced in putting their lives together. It's a light read that provides what are most likely accurate descriptions of just what that experience must have been and the kinds of people living on the edge who will always define much of what the Quarter is.
April 24, 2012
Really vivid and lively debut novel from a NoLa writer. Love how to brought NoLa to life, and gave into a peek into lives in the aftermath of the flooding. Colorful characters, great sense of setting. Always great to find a talented local writer who can bring their community to life on the page.
July 15, 2012
Liked it. Was very funny in parts but I kept finding myself comparing it to Confederacy of Dunces which wasn't fair of me. Perhaps I'll try reading it again and see if I change my mind about it's weaknesses.
February 12, 2015
A wonderful story of post Katrina New Orleans and what made quirky characters in a city know to love a good time just a little bit crazier. James Nolan knows the city and the people and loves both. This is a fun read and I highly recommend it.
May 20, 2012
Started off great. Quirky characters. Became repetitive. The occult element was uninteresting.
November 18, 2013
Great book!
May 28, 2013
Great sense of place in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Funny, tragic and full of characters.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews