The Newcomers: The Chronicles of Touperdu, Book I

The Newcomers arrive on the Isle of Touperdu

It is 1880, and immigrants are flocking to a new refuge from the economic and racial turmoil of the late nineteenth century. For New Orleans chef Amadeo Roselyn, the Isle of Touperdu is where he can open his own restaurant and raise his daughters as educated, marriageable ladies in a place free of the violence roiling the post-Reconstruction era south. For Gwennoelle Duday, the matriarch of a rackety family of witches from the French village of Fourche, it is where the Dudays can act freely, unfettered by other people of “talent” and any foolish talk of rules and higher law. 

But the night before they disembark, a question troubles both Amadeo in first class, and Madame Duday in steerage. It is one that will haunt them for years after they step onto the island—is the promise of Touperdu a lie? 

The Newcomers: The Chronicles of Touperdu is the first novel in a series set on the fictional island of Touperdu, where the lines blur between superstition and magic, legend and history, promises and betrayal. Two immigrant families confront the question all outsiders face when they enter a new world. What can you do—and what will you give up—to truly belong? 

About Pam Troy

Pam Troy worked for twenty years in the Events Department at San Francisco’s Mechanics’ Institute, one of the oldest libraries on the West Coast. Though she has resided in San Francisco for most of her adult life, she was born and raised in Louisiana, and her fascination with that state’s history, culture and folklore went into creating the world of Touperdu. Her short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies like Space and Time, Crimson Fog, State of Horror: Louisiana, and Another Dimension. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, a cat, and far too many books.

Praise for The Newcomers: The Chronicles of Touperdu, Book I

One of the joys of reading a novel like The Newcomers is knowing you have a stellar recommendation for your bookish friends. Troy’s prose is so artfully immersive that, when a ghost drifts across the page, it carries no whiff of genre baggage, being instead another well-placed note in a symphony of family, class, tradition, home, loss, and hope. Seamlessly braiding compelling and diverse points of view, Troy has as firm a grasp on the humanity of these characters as she does on her craft. The island of Touperdu may be fictional but readers will be haunted and enriched by their sojourn there.

—Eli Brown, author of Gunpowder and Cinnamon and The Feasts of Tremang

In The Newcomers (first in the series known as The Chronicles of Touperdu), Pam Troy has created a breathtaking 19th-century world on an imagined island inhabited by a truly stunning multitude of characters and imbued with a touch of magic that may not be as light as it first appears. But is the island of Touperdu enchanted or cursed? The newly arrived have travelled from as close as Louisiana and as far away as France by ship, longing to be free of their pasts, to live without rules, raise their children in safety, and live in peace. The new culture finds that it has not left racism, classicism, and misogyny behind, and belonging means conforming to the prevailing new rules. Who gets to set these rules and who must conform to them—and the way inherited beliefs and personal traumas play out in the new world island—is much of what the book is about, highlighting the very questions that demand answers of modern readers for today’s real-world problems. The world-building is exquisite, down to the most minute details, while sweeping up the currents of recent history, especially America’s post-Reconstructionist South. There is a restaurant that turns out jambalaya, black gumbo, shrimp creole and whose proprietor, Amadeo, needs to make it a success. There is a woman with powers who is accused of witchcraft and another who wields ultimate authority. There are fights, whippings, accidents (?), community gatherings, observances, and celebrations, an enchanted necklace with a ruby stone, and much, much more. Troy is a natural storyteller with an authentic voice. Her omniscient narrator sees with equal compassion into the hearts and souls of little children as well as grown men and women. It is to Troy’s credit that one cannot help but think of the fantasy that is The Newcomers as Dickensian in its devotion to realism, scope, and urgent social issues.

—Pam Reitman, author of Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life