Blurb: Being a civil rights activist isn’t easy in rural Louisiana. Raine’s found herself ostracized and alone because she’s a woman who speaks her mind.
Fed up, she leaves her country world behind for beautiful San Francisco. There, Raine meets a new best friend, Jo, who is free-spirited and living life to the fullest. But Jo’s in more danger than Raine realizes, Down on the Corner of Love.
Beneath the opera house, Palais Garnier, there sits a water tank, and some folks say that once a man lived there who had no face. “The Phantom of the Opera” was based upon this place.
That tank, which has been referred to as a lake and a lagoon, inspired Gaston Leroux, a crime reporter and theatre and opera critic, to use it as a setting in his classic novel. In the book and hit musical that followed, the cellar serves as the tragic figure’s dark and eerie lair. But originally, it was a purely practical part of Charles Garnier’s opera house design.
When the foundation was being built in 1862, a combination of wells and steam pumps operating 24 hours a day could not keep the groundwater away for long enough to lay the substructure. Garnier incorporated a cistern into his design to redistribute the water and relieve the water pressure on the basement walls. It also kept the water available in case of a fire.
Water Tank Beneath Palais Garnier – Paris, France – Atlas Obscura
I refer to the lagoon throughout the Seen Through the Phantom’s Eyes series, as well as in A Light Across the Lake.
I’ve got you covered! Bayou Fire, Last Stop: Storyville, and Yellowjack and the River Man will take you right to the Big Easy. Laissez les bontemps rouler!
Jo came back from LA with my jeans and a ton of new records that he insisted on playing for me while we shared a pizza.
“My friend Diane painted them for you; she’s got a little boutique on Melrose and one day she’s going to be really big. She’s doing stuff for Janis and Jimi.”
Of course I knew who they were. Janis Joplin was practically a neighbor, and we saw her all the time. I loved going to her shows; she was so full of energy. Plus, I have to be honest; it was nice to hear a Southern voice besides my own now and again. — Down on the Corner of Love
A while back, I realized that all of the female singers I liked had big personalities and voices to match. Janis Joplin, who would have been 80 years old today, was definitely in possession of both.
Elvis Presley’s only child, Lisa Marie, passed away unexpectedly yesterday at age 54. While her father makes a brief appearance in It Happened in Memphis, the plot of that book takes place years before Lisa Marie’s birth.
May her memory be a blessing for her family.
Sharon E. Cathcart 