He’s been a jazz pianist, a TV and radio host, a lawyer, and now a novelist. Michael H. Rubin, an adjunct law professor at LSU, takes his first foray into fiction with the release of the historical thriller The Cottoncrest Curse early next month.
Rubin weaves a tale through multiple generations and residents of the Cottoncrest Plantation in fictional Petit Rouge Parish. Like most historic south Louisiana homes—or maybe any south Louisiana home, for that matter—this one comes with its fair share of ghost stories. For the Cottoncrest Plantation, it’s all to do with a curse that’s plagued residents for years and brought many to untimely and often gruesome deaths. One such incident, an apparent murder-suicide, gets pegged on the novel’s central character, Jake Gold, a chameleon of sorts who fled Russia in the late 1800s and wound up peddling wares to the poor Cajuns and former slaves living along the Mississippi River, including pricey German blades he expertly sharpened.
Told in brisk chapters that bounce among multicultural characters and across years, Rubin’s novel offers not just a thrilling murder mystery, but also a compelling look at life in south Louisiana during its most tumultuous decades.
