Claude Collier made the world seem kind," says Louise Brown, -beginning a tale of Violent Love, Breakdowns, Moods, and Felonious Drunkenness that floats from one lush, green, sweltering New Orleans evening to another. Returning home after four years of college in New England ("Among the Yankees I have known," she says, "I only met one who had the grace to apologize to me about the War"), Louise bemusedly finds herself reimmersed in New Orleans...