Family Inheritance by Deborah LeBlanc

"Deborah LeBlanc?s prose is a flying leap into the labyrinth of madness and self-doubt …"

"…a roller coaster ride where terror is just around the next curve…"

Todd Guidry is in the grip of madness, a tortured prisoner of what the doctors at Municipal believe is schizophrenia. Madness has a name: Maikana.

On the day after the celebration of her promotion, Jessica Guidry LeJeune receives a phone call from the police in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana. Her younger brother, Todd, has been found naked and disoriented and sent to Municipal Mental Health Clinic. Certain she must go alone to protect her son and her husband from a danger she feels but cannot name, Jessica flies back to Louisiana to find her best friend, Lisa Daigle, waiting and determined to help. In spite of the overwhelming need to keep everyone out of harm’s way, Jessica agrees to stay with Lisa and her mother, Sharon, never realizing Sharon holds the key to a secret that will free the Guidry children of the past and secure their future.

In the bayou, Eli wrests one more victim from Maikana’s evil influence before Johanson sets him on the first leg of a journey to return what was unknowingly stolen from an unborn child. If Eli fails, Maikana’s madness will destroy him and the last rasaunt’s legacy.

Family Inheritance begins like the first strong jolt before a slow climb to the mother of all roller coaster rides where terror is just around the next curve or over the next hill. Deborah LeBlanc’s prose is a flying leap into the labyrinth of madness and self-doubt that stops long enough to catch a breath before the next hurtling plunge into the abyss. Writing with power and imagination strongly rooted in Cajun Louisiana, LeBlanc’s images are unforgettable and permeated with the odors of red beans and rice and the constant lurking presence of childhood fears waiting to jump out at the last turn of the jack-in-the-box’s crank.

Reviewer: J. M. Cornwell