• Free and open to all. (No requirement to be a krewe member!)
• Books available at Frenchmen Art and Books.
• Book Club coordinater: Krewe founder Amy Kirk Duvoisin
• We have planned an in-person discussion of each book, but we may add a second discussion session on Zoom if there’s enough interest. Let us know if you would be interested in a Zoom discussion.
• Members of the book club voted to select one book about New Orleans history and one book about Joan of Arc this year.

Book description: Paris, 1720. La Salpêtrière hospital is in crisis: too many occupants, not enough beds. Halfway across the world, France’s colony in the wilds of North America has space to spare and needs families to fill it. So the director of the hospital rounds up nearly a hundred female “volunteers” of childbearing age—orphans, prisoners, and mental patients—to be shipped to New Orleans.

Book description: We selected this book because this is the book on which film-maker Baz Luhrmann is basing his script of his forthcoming film about Joan of Arc! A gritty, authentic retelling of Joan of Arc as a bewildered peasant girl hearing divine voices, focusing on her military triumphs, such as lifting the Siege of Orleans, and the tragic arc of her transformation, challenging legends with historical realism. (Author Thomas Keneally won a Booker Prize for his novel Schindler’s Ark, which was the basis for the award-winning movie Schindler’s List.)