Corina's Way

Rod Davis

Davis sets an authentic tone for his first novel.  The soul of the book rings true.
--Foreword

A spicy bouillabaisse, New Orleans-set, by Texas journalist Davis. In the tradition of Flannery O’Connor or John Kennedy Toole: a welcome romp, told in an old-fashioned style and with traditional southern charm.
—Kirkus Reviews

Davis captures the essence of New Orleans...[he] nails the complicated racial and religious stew that makes up bayou culture, and his witty, fast style perfectly complements the clever premise.
—Publishers Weekly

Davis combines religion, voodoo, New Age philosophy, and good old-fashioned capitalism, greed, envy, and a host of other unsavory motives in his entertaining first novel.
––Booklist

Davis obviously knows his stuff, and he captures the appeal of voudou for even the casual spiritual tourist, and its meaning for the true believer. Most of the characters are well drawn and appealing, and the novel moves along at a fine pace . . . With nods to both Walker Percy in thoughtfulness and John Kennedy Toole in its rambunctious humor, Corina’s Way, an insightful and affectionate tribute to New Orleans, is the perfect summertime offering, no matter what saints you pray to.
—The Times Picayune

[A] delightful novel of faith and, ultimately, redemption.
—The Birmingham News

Corina’s Way is a triumph in Southern storytelling...a bubbling pot of clever insanity. Davis’ pen leaks wit and cunning on each page...Each chapter flows seamlessly and we discover something of ourselves in each realistically crafted individual...a beautiful stroke of fiction.
—Capital City Free Press

The author takes readers on a ride filled with plot twists and turns...[readers] will undoubtedly enjoy this roller-coaster story.
--Dallas Morning News

...a charming guide to a world most of us will never get to visit...
—San Antonio Express News

More than any author I know Rod Davis understands and knows that hidden southern space where the ancient currents of African spirituality still linger in the American soul. Corina's Way, a story of faith and redemption is a wondrful and powerful novel, a stunning fictional debut from an author who has already brought us what is arguably the finest account of Voudou in America.
—Wade Davis, author of The Serpent and the Rainbow

Rod Davis’s Corina’s Way is... a racy tour down the side streets of New Orleans — as Kurt Vonnegut might conduct it — rich with the clash of cultures, alive with Afro-Cuban santos, dark with duplicity and danger, and healed by a gospel chorale. Corina’s Way is a fast-paced tale that leaves you thinking.
— Tony Dunbar, author of Crooked Man and the Tubby Dubonnet mystery series.

Rod Davis's novel, Corina’s Way, is an absorbing tale of Corina Youngblood, a New Orleans spiritual healer in the African/Haitian derived practice of 'Santos'. Corina's efforts in the healing work of the body and soul becomes a meditation on American marketplace culture, where even emotional well being can be turned into a commodity. But in a powerfully rendered climactic scene, Rod Davis makes a thrilling and transcendent gesture that lifts his characters and readers, if only briefly, out of our all too human craving for whatever we want at the expense of others.
—Wesley Brown, author of Tragic Magic and Darktown Strutters

Make room on that crammed New Orleans shelf for Corina's Way, a multi-layered tale of suspense about our mysterious underbelly and its all-seeing navel.
--Andrei Codrescu

The spirit world of New Orleans incubates a volatile and offbeat mixture of religion, politics, race and fate in this latter-day parable of the interaction of a man adrift in life and a woman rooted in her faith.

As efforts by Corina Youngblood— Christian minister, voudou priestess, and botanica proprietor—to stop the construction by a Cuban padrino of  a SuperBotanica, a "Wal-Mart of spiritual supplies" begin to founder, she finds accidental alliance with Gus Houston, Acting Chaplain at a prominent girl's prep school in the Garden District.  Despite a calamity in the Gospel Tent at Jazzfest and a cost to her family, she emerges victorious in the struggle.  Thanks go to her Jesus, and her santos, as they have all her life, for such is her way.

about the author
Rod Davis is an award-winning author and journalist whose work has appeared in numerous publications.  He taught writing at the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University and was a guest at the Yaddo Colony.  He is the author of American Voudou: Journey into a Hidden World (UNT Press)  His work is included in David Byrne's True Stories (Penguin) and Best American Travel Writing 2002 (Houghton-Mifflin).  An eighth-generation Texan, he lives in San Antonio.