About the Book

In 1916, at age fifteen, Norma Wallace arrived in New Orleans. Sexy and shrewd, she quickly went from streetwalker to madam and by 1920 had opened what became a legendary house of prostitution. There she entertained a steady stream of governors, gangsters, and movie stars until she was arrested at last in 1962. Shortly before she died in 1974, she tape--recorded her memories-the scandalous stories of a powerful woman who had the city's politicians in her pocket and whose lovers included the twenty-five-year-old boy next door, whom she married when she was sixty-four. Combining those tapes with original research, Christine Wiltz chronicles not just Norma's rise and fall but also the social history of New Orleans, thick with the vice and corruption that flourished there--and, like "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and "Philistines at the Hedgerow," resurrects a vanished secret world.

Product Details

Media: Paperback Book, 264 pages

Language: English

Publisher: Da Capo Press (Feb. 28th, 2001)

ISBN-10: 0306810123

ISBN-13: 9780306810121

Dimensions: 5.87 x 8.99 x 0.73 inches

Shipping Weight: 0.69 lbs

• Categories: General State History General Women's Studies General True Crime