Children of Strangers

by Lyle Saxon

The moving story of love in a Cane River community bound by race and class. Famie is a mulatto girl whose ancestors-free blacks-rivaled the white planters in wealth and culture. But on a Louisiana plantation in the 1920s, she is an outcast. An illicit love affair with a white landowner leaves her with a son. She dreams her son will be accepted into white society, but in her struggle to transcend race and class Famie must sacrifice the last links to her past.

Genres: Historical Fiction

312 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1986

About the author

Lyle Saxon was a journalist and author best known for his work with The Times-Picayune and his leadership of the Louisiana WPA Writers' Project during the 1930s. Born in 1891, likely in either Baton Rouge or Washington State, Saxon was raised in Baton Rouge and later became a central literary figure in New Orleans. He lived in the French Quarter, where his home became a gathering place for writers like William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson. His grandmother, Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, was a noted suffragette and poet.
Saxon authored several notable books exploring Louisiana's culture and history. Among these are Fabulous New Orleans, Old Louisiana, and Gumbo Ya-Ya, a celebrated collection of Louisiana folktales. He also wrote novels including Lafitte the Pirate, which inspired Cecil B. DeMille's film The Buccaneer, and Children of Strangers, set among Creole communities along the Cane River. His book The Friends of Joe Gilmore reflects his personal relationship with his Black valet.
Saxon embraced New Orleans traditions, especially Mardi Gras, participating with theatrical flair. Openly gay within artistic circles, he led a vibrant social life that intertwined with his literary pursuits. He died in 1946 and is buried in Baton Rouge.

Reviews

[Racheal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up in New Orleans with a range of other Saxon books years ago. It’s pitches as an historical narrative and character sketch of the Creole community. It does present an interesting insight into social class at a specific time and place in Southern history. I do question the motivations of the main character and wonder if Saxon really understood women well enough to write from the perspective of one though. It’s certainly not a happy or triumphant tale - don’t be expecting a happy ending, for anyone, when you go into it.

[Tammy Cote · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving story of life in different and difficult times.

[Katia Rutledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read!

[Trisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book on a tour of Melrose Plantation, a national historic landmark site located in the Isle Brevelle Creole region of northwest Louisiana. It has a fascinating history, beginning in the late 1700’s when Marie Therese Coincoin, a young black slave, caught the eye of French merchant Calude Thomas Metoyer who arranged to “lease” rather than purchase her from her owner. Legally, they could not marry, but they lived together for nineteen years and had ten children. Eventually Metoyer granted Marie Therese her freedom along with a parcel of land, and over the years she and her children received additional land grants that increased their holdings. Marie Therese became a wealthy woman, owning over 200 slaves of her own. She and her children lived as “gens de couleur libre” (free people of color) and their fortunes prospered for several generations. The Metoyer family owned Melrose Plantation until shortly after the Civil War when it passed into other hands, but their descendents still live along the Cane river in the Isle Brevelle Creole community. In fact one of them, Betty Metoyer-Roque, manages the Museum Gift Shop and it was she who greeted us the day we toured Melrose plantation and told us about this book. It had been written there in the 1930’s at a time when the property was owned by Cammie Garrett Henry, a patron of the Arts, who invited artists and writers to use the plantation as a creative retreat. They belonged to what was known as the “Southern Renaissance” and included well known writers like William Faulkner, as well as the author of this book Lyle Saxon. It’s based on the lives of the Creole people of the Isle Brevelle Community and their culture, as well as Melrose Plantation itself. I would never have heard about this book had it not been for the tour of the plantation’s “Big House” where a first edition copy of “Children of Strangers” can be found on a shelf among a collection of other books and letters from early 20th century southern regional writers whose novels were written while on retreat there. The book itself was a fascinating read – particularly because I could immediately visualize the setting and understand a little bit about the Creole culture having had a chance to learn about it while touring the plantation. I enjoyed reading it because of its historical significance as well as its major themes which portray the racial tensions that were such a part of people’s lives because of the rigid class divisions which were strictly drawn to emphasize the superiority of the Creoles over Blacks and the inferiority of both in the eyes of whites.

[Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent commentary on the caste system as it existed in the Cane River area of Louisiana in 1915-1935. The story follows Famie, a Creole of skin color so light she could pass as white. She lives in a community of land owners, all mulattoes, and works for a white plantation owner, Mr Guy, doing wash and ironing of children's clothing. The "Negroes" creoles don't mix, don't even eat at the same table or work in the same house and their rules are unwritten but unbreakable. Very insightful writing, given the time it was written (1937). Part of this book appeared in The New York Herald Tribune.

Part of the pre-1940 books I'm reading for the SIY Challenge #5. This book was one of the books my father read while in Antarctica in 1939.

[Mark Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not many people know about this book. I became aware of it when I traveled about Natchitoches, Louisiana. It is about the caste system along the Cane River. Above all it is about unconditional love. I placed this book on my bookshelf next to Harper Lee's one novel.

[Jana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though the book is sad, I liked it. It's very well written and seems to be a good depiction of life in the Natchitoches, Louisiana, area around the beginning of the 20th Century.

[Kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyle Saxon creates a beautiful critique on the unreasonable hierarchy between whites, negroes, and the prideful Cane River Creoles in this novel. Told from multiple perspectives, it tracks the fictional, however very plausible, events on the Yucca plantation using colorful prose (literally). There's an uncomfortable focus on color that makes the reader shift in his/her seat. Gracefully tragic, Saxon displays what denying one's ethnicity can do to individuals in a closely knit community and the inner workings of the ethnically diverse Cane River inhabitants, albeit from a privileged white author who only experienced them from the outside looking in.