Unbroken
Page 21
He painted one major work while he was there, A Cotton Office in New Orleans, featuring portraits of his uncle and two brothers. Degas stayed longer than he intended, until March 1873, so he could finish the painting. By then his uncle’s cotton office was out of business.
Five years after Edgar Degas left New Orleans, his brother René caused a huge family scandal. He abandoned Estelle and their children, and eloped with the married woman who lived next door, making his way back to France and starting a second family. Edgar was furious with his brother and refused to speak to him for years.
His uncle, Michel Musson, legally adopted Estelle’s children, changing their name from De Gas to Musson. When René died in 1921, the two surviving children had to file a lawsuit in France to claim their share of his estate. His children in France had no idea that this New Orleans family even existed.
While he was in New Orleans, Degas seemed entranced by what he called the “black world.” In a letter he declared that “I have not the time to explore it” — but he wouldn’t have had to look too far. Although Degas’ uncle Michel and brother René were both members of the White League, bitter opponents of Reconstruction and black suffrage, their family had an Afro-Creole side. The internationally renowned inventor Norbert Rillieux was the son of Degas’ great-uncle and a free woman of color. Descendants of the Musson/Degas and the Rillieux families still live in New Orleans today; both have family tombs in St. Louis Cemetery One. Edgar Degas and Norbert Rillieux are buried in Paris.
After the scandal of René’s abandonment of Estelle, Degas stopped all communication with the New Orleans branch of the family. He would never see or write to Estelle, Desirée, or Mathilde again. But when he died in 1917, many of the pictures from his five-month stay in New Orleans — including pictures of his beloved cousins — were found in his studio.
Many thanks to my insightful and patient editor, Aimee Friedman, the team at Point/Scholastic, and Richard Abate at 3Arts. Tom Moody, as ever, served as sounding board, research support, and first reader.
Thanks also to our New Orleans insiders — especially Rebecca Lewis, Russell Desmond, Sarah Doerries and Jay Holland, Nicola Wolf, and Trina Beck and Chris Noyes — and the Marksville/Jazz Fest crew: Paige and Rodney Rabalais, and Tiffany and John Ed Laborde.
I’m indebted to the New Orleans African American Museum (www.noaam.org) in Tremé, and I learned so much from the excellent and informative tour led by Milton Carr. And I would have known much less about the finer points of high school dances without the expert advice of Sara Tobin, and Ashland Hines and her class at Sacred Heart.
While all the restaurants mentioned in the novel are real (and highly recommended), the three schools — Basin Street High, St. Simeon’s, and Temple Mead Academy — are all fictional.
Readers keen to learn more about New Orleans should explore the wonderful books in the Neighborhood Story Project (www.neighborhoodstoryproject.org). For insights into Degas’ time in the city, see Degas and New Orleans: A French Impressionist in America, edited by Gail Feigenbaum, and Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable by Christopher Benfey.
ALSO BY PAULA MORRIS
Ruined: A Novel
Dark Souls
Copyright © 2013 by Paula Morris
All rights reserved. Published by Point, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, POINT, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morris, Paula.
Unbroken: a Ruined novel / Paula Morris. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Returning to New Orleans for spring break, sixteen-year-old Rebecca finds herself embroiled in another murder mystery from more than a century ago, when she meets the ghost of a troubled boy.
e-ISBN: 978-0-545-50907-7
[1. New Orleans (La.) — Fiction. 2. Ghosts — Fiction. 3. Haunted places — Fiction. 4. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.M82845Un 2013
[Fic] — dc23
2012013461
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Postscript
Acknowledgments
Also by Paula Morris
Copyright