L’Ombrage
A Novel by Jarret Marshall
In the bruised light of 1887 Louisiana, Élodie Lacroix returns to L’Ombrage—the house that ruined her mother, buried her grandmother, and has been waiting far too long to call her home.
What she inherits is not a sanctuary, but a sentence. Her grandmother’s will names her the new Warden of L’Ombrage, keeper of a sentient house built to imprison the women of her bloodline. Within its ledgered walls lie generations of Lacroix women—Isabelle, who drowned a parish in vengeance; Geneviève, who stole faces like mirrors; and Elara, who tried to set them free.
The house remembers them all. It listens through the pipes. It keeps score in the dust. And now, it keeps Élodie.
Guided by Ruth, the last caretaker, Élodie unearths the Registre du Guet—the Warden’s Ledger—and learns that the house was never haunted by ghosts, but by commandments. Each confinement was written as devotion, each prayer a chain disguised as faith.
As the Mississippi swells and the river spirits demand their due, Élodie must decide whether mercy is worth the ruin it brings. To free the imprisoned, she must offer the only thing the house truly wants: a keeper who will never leave.
When the storm breaks, the parish will whisper that the old Lacroix house finally made peace.
They will be wrong.
It found a new voice.
And it is still listening.