{"id":5261,"date":"2023-09-25T08:24:04","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T15:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5261"},"modified":"2023-09-25T08:24:04","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T15:24:04","slug":"danielle-arceneaux-glory-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/danielle-arceneaux-glory-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Danielle Arceneaux: Glory Be"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glory Broussard #1<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Great books are like a song.\u00a0 They have a melody and a rhythm all their own, and envelop you in their reality.\u00a0 Danielle Arceneaux\u2019s debut novel, Glory Be, <\/em>might be Patti LaBelle\u2019s You Are My Friend<\/a>. <\/em>Glory, the heroine of the novel, is an older, heavier black woman living in LaFayette, Louisiana.\u00a0 She\u2019s a divorcee and fills her time with church, the local Red Hat Society, and heading to the coffee shop Sunday afternoons to run her business – she\u2019s a bookie.\u00a0 Her life is in chaos, and it\u2019s not made any better when her best friend, Amity, is found dead, an apparent suicide.\u00a0 Like many a mystery heroine before her, Glory is certain Amity\u2019s death is not a suicide, and begins trying to prove it.<\/p>\n

Glory is a bit of an outcast in town for various reasons.\u00a0 Her house has been condemned by the city \u2013 she\u2019s a bit of a hoarder \u2013 and the Red Hat ladies want nothing to do with her after a poor catering decision on her part.\u00a0 Luckily, Glory\u2019s daughter Delphine has come home from New York, on the run herself from a failing marriage. She\u2019s on leave from her law firm and she throws herself, first of all, into clearing Glory\u2019s home of the accumulations of things.\u00a0 Together, the two of them start to look into Amity\u2019s murder themselves, despite the local police chief (and high school beau of Delphine\u2019s) telling them to knock it off or they\u2019ll get themselves in trouble.<\/p>\n

They surely do get in trouble, running down various leads that involve fentanyl, dog fights, bees, and a slashed tire. \u00a0Glory is finding some power within herself, though, to continue the investigation into the local chemical company that Amity (who was a nun) and the local priest had taken on.\u00a0 She manages to find a solid, smoking gun trail of clues.<\/p>\n

This is all pretty typical mystery stuff, even cozy mystery stuff.\u00a0 What is not cozy are Arceneaux\u2019s observations and lived experience of racism in the deep south.\u00a0 It\u2019s matter of fact and heartbreaking at the same time.\u00a0 As Glory declares to Delphine early on, \u201c\u2026when it comes to black women getting hurt or disappearing, folks look the other way.\u00a0 No one is working overtime for us. Damn, they ain\u2019t doing their jobs at a basic level. And I\u2019m tired of it. No one is coming to save us. If we want the truth, we\u2019re going to have to go out and find it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miraculously, the book is not a polemic.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lot of things.\u00a0 It\u2019s a great story, one of the more vivid first novels I\u2019ve read, and the characters are flat out fantastic.\u00a0 Glory herself is a three-dimensional miracle.\u00a0 Arceneaux has a tight way with a phrase and a story \u2013 the book clocks in at just over 250 pages \u2013 and her observations hit you and stay with you.\u00a0 Some of Glory\u2019s revelations as she experiences the events in the book are moving, memorable and, dare I say, spiritual.\u00a0 Please make her acquaintance.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be changing your reading life for the better. — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glory Broussard #1 Great books are like a song.\u00a0 They have a melody and a rhythm all their own, and envelop you in their reality.\u00a0 Danielle Arceneaux\u2019s debut novel, Glory Be, might be Patti LaBelle\u2019s You Are My Friend. Glory, the heroine of the novel, is an older, heavier black woman living in LaFayette, Louisiana.\u00a0 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1382,1218,1384,1383,1385,1386,154,1276],"class_list":["post-5261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-danielle-arceneaux","tag-debut","tag-gloria-broussard","tag-glory-be","tag-lafayette","tag-louisiana","tag-pegasus-crime","tag-robin-agnew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5261"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5277,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5261\/revisions\/5277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}