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Independent
November 2025
On Sale: November 18, 2025
220 pages
Kindle: B0FSQCHDMT
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An entertaining and poignant addition to the post-Katrina canon of New Orleans stories. A Gathering Place takes us inside a loving family, complete with inter-generational drama, joyful and tragic memories, and delicious Lebanese food. The author takes on some complex racial and socio-economic dynamics, wrapping them into a lively and sometimes madcap plot with tenderness, music, and poetry. It’s rare we get an octogenarian protagonist with this kind of drive and determination—Blue’s story will touch your heart.
—Elisa M. Speranza, author of The Italian Prisoner
When 81-year-old Blue Hamieh—a devout Lebanese Catholic—hears the voice of the Virgin Mary telling her to create a "gathering place" in New Orleans, she walks away from everything—her Mississippi home, her family's pleas, and all common sense.
It's 2009. Katrina's wreckage still scars the Gulf Coast as well as the city of New Orleans. Blue spends her life savings on a collapsing building in one of the Big Easy's most desolate neighborhoods, determined to turn it into a café that will unite three fractured communities. But crime, poverty, and underlying racial tensions close in fast. Thieves lurk in the shadows. Deep-rooted distrust threatens to divide rather than unite. And her own family—convinced she's lost her mind—plots to take her back home by force.
As her memory begins to slip, Blue is running out of time. To finish what she believes is a divine mission, she'll have to defy everyone who doubts her—and face down a city that may never be ready for her dream.
Vicki Salloum's gripping novel is a powerful story of faith, resilience, and the courage to rebuild when the world says it's too late. This is a story for all whose lives have been touched by natural disasters and devastating personal loss—and for all women who face ridicule in their quest to do what they believe is right.
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