New Orleans Gothic

With the memory of Hurricane Katrina still haunting the city of New Orleans - and popular imagination - most novels set in the Big Easy these days are in some way about the storm.

But Josh Russell, associate professor of creative writing, was out ahead of the storm when writing his latest novel.

"I finished this book literally days before Katrina hit in 2005," he said. "It really is more of an Iraq War book."

Thematically, that is. "My Bright Midnight" (LSU Press, 2010) actually takes place during the last days of World War II. The story centers on the character of Walter Schmidt, a German immigrant who at the time of the story has been in America for 20 years.

Russell, who lived in New Orleans for many years, said he became interested in the war after divers found an intact German U-Boat in the Gulf of Mexico in 2001. The sunken submarine was part of a German blockade of the port of New Orleans.

Further research revealed that the U.S. government had run 50 POW camps in Louisiana for captured German soldiers. An older friend told Russell that when he was a child, German POWs had been used on road crews filling potholes in New Orleans city streets.

Russell began to think about what it would have been like to be a German immigrant in the city in the 1940s.

"Then 9/11 happened," Russell said. "I remember being shocked at how quickly the anti-Arab bigotry started. Somebody firebombed a Lebanese restaurant in New Orleans."

In the novel, Schmidt struggles with his own past, his marriage, his best friend, his family back in Germany, and his suddenly tenuous position in American society.

"It's really a book about loyalties," Russell said. "Everybody's exhausted by the war, and everyone has these weird divided loyalties."

"My Bright Midnight," which came out in August, has already made a splash with the critics, most notably with a mention in Vanity Fair and a Bob Edward's interview with Russell that was broadcast on National Public Radio.

Russell's next book, titled "A True History of the Captivation, Transport to Strange Lands, & Deliverance of Hannah Gutentag," will be published in 2012.