Second Line for the Living: Love, Justice, and Survival in New Orleans
New Orleans is more than the setting of Second Line for the Living. It is the pulse, the memory, and the contested ground beneath a story about love, displacement, reentry, and the machinery that decides who gets to remain.
A love story inside a fight for home
Marielle “Mars” Prejean is fighting to keep her family's Central City legacy as a massive tax bill threatens her home. Amos “Deuce” Toussaint returns after eight years in Angola for his brother's mistake, only to find his record restricting him to a demolition crew tearing down the very block Mars is trying to save.
The true villains are not kingpins, but the bureaucratic machinery of tax sales and parole files designed to displace.
Against the brass and heartbeat of Danneel Street, Mars and Deuce confront the cost of staying in a community that refuses to be erased. Their relationship carries the emotional stakes, while the systems around them reveal how paperwork can become a weapon.
Why this story matters now
Second Line for the Living gives readers a human-scale view of reentry and displacement. It is for readers of literary fiction, justice-centered fiction, New Orleans stories, community advocates, educators, and book clubs ready to discuss who gets labeled, who gets displaced, and who gets to write the future of a neighborhood.
Read the complimentary long excerpt, then choose your preferred bookseller.
A powerful story of justice, resilience, and the profound cost of staying.
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