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Palm Beach Daily News (FL)
JAN SJOSTROM, Daily News Arts Editor
Published: May 2, 2007
It's difficult for most authors to get their first books published. But TJ Fisher's Orleans Embrace faced more obstacles than most. Orleans Embrace and its companion title, The Secret Gardens of the Vieux Carre by Roy F. Guste Jr., recently published under one cover by Morgana Press. In the beginning, Fisher, who lives in Palm Beach and New Orleans, simply wanted to bring Guste's book, originally published by Little Brown in 1993, to the attention of Morgana, a small press in New Orleans that focuses on writers and subjects pertaining to the city. "I thought it would be a wonderful first project for a tiny press," she said. "It seemed that it would be a good book to put in hotels and that tourists would buy it. It's very beloved. It's been a collectible for years." Guste is a member of the family that owns the celebrated Antoine's Restaurant in the French Quarter. A neighbor of Fisher's in New Orleans, he's lived in the French Quarter, otherwise known as the Vieux Carre, for 27 years. Guste has written a number of books, most of them about New Orleans cuisine. He detoured into gardens to satisfy a curiosity with which he's always empathized. "Every tourist out on the street in the French Quarter does the same thing I did as a child - tries to peek through gates and doors to see what's behind them," said Guste, who also shot the book's photographs. Morgana signed a deal with Guste in August 2005, one week before Hurricane Katrina struck, drowning the city and scattering Morgana's forces. The publisher persevered, but it couldn't secure a distributor because the text was old and unlikely to be reviewed or stocked by chain stores, Fisher said. Meanwhile, Katrina released a flood of a different kind in Fisher, who'd been suffering writer's block for years. "After Katrina, I started writing like crazy," Fisher said. Morgana will publish her second book, Vieux Carre Chic: The Art of Overindulgent Home Decor, in 2008. As the words poured out, some of them evolved into two essays that bookend Guste's volume. The first section is "a prettier narrative about the magic and the specialness of New Orleans," Fisher said. "The ending is much stronger. It's a call to America." The call is needed because "in the last couple years, lots of people have become unsympathetic to the plight of the region," she said. "Americans have become accustomed to instant gratification. We have a push-button mentality. A lot of us lack the will to rebuild." To illustrate her portions of the book, Fisher recruited another neighbor, Louis Sahuc, whose French Quarter gallery sells his photographs of New Orleans. Sahuc opened his archives to her and agreed to shoot additional photographs for the book. With the additions by Fisher and Sahuc, the project qualified as a new book, weighing in at 5.3 pounds and 338 pages. Last summer, the Independent Book Publishers Association selected the book for a program that helps presses get trade representation for a single title, and the Independent Publishers Group agreed to distribute it nationally. By this time, the book had become more than a project: It was a crusade. "Many have given freely of their time, efforts, blood, sweat, tears and manpower since Katrina to bring this work to the heads, hearts and hands of America ...," publisher Irene Singletary said. Fisher, for example, wasn't paid for her work. The book is a finalist for five Independent Book Publishers Association awards and has been nominated for another award. Morgana will donate all proceeds from the book, which sells for $50, to two French Quarter preservation groups: Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents and Associates; and the Friends of the Vieux Carre Commission. The publisher already has given $13,050. The French Quarter was relatively unhurt by Katrina, but preservation efforts have taken a back seat since the storm. Like other city agencies, the Vieux Carre Commission, the agency charged with protecting the quarter, suffered budget cuts. It laid off its inspectors and hasn't replaced them. Fisher, who lobbied to have a 1910 cottage she owns on Root Trail in Palm Beach landmarked and is restoring an 1853 home in the French Quarter, recognizes that New Orleans' other needs are pressing. But French Quarter preservation deserves to be higher on the nation's priority list, she said. "The French Quarter is living history, not just of Louisiana, but of all America," she said. - jsjostrom@pbdailynews.com
Illustration: PHOTO (B&W & 2 C)
1. (B&W) Photo by Louis Sahuc / Morgana Press
Decatur Gates open to a mist-covered Jackson Square with a bronze statue of Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson on horseback, tipping his hat near St. Louis Cathedral. The square was laid out in 1721.
2. (C) Courtesy of Morgana Press
TJ Fisher, author of 'Orleans Embrace,' says, 'A lot of us lack the will to rebuild' New Orleans.
3. (C) Photo by Roy F. Guste Jr. / Morgana Press
A secret garden on the Rue d'Orleans. To the side of an entrance to a patio is a grouping containing Thunbergia vine, impatiens, geraniums, begonias, dusty miller and Johnny jump-ups.
Copyright (c) 2007 Palm Beach Daily News
