The House on Esplanade

Every year since November 11, 1918, in a house on New Orleans’s Esplanade Avenue, Yvonne St. Amant lights a candle for her husband, lost in the Great War. Then on this same day in 1933, a young woman brings a baby to Yvonne’s door before shortly disappearing. The baby, nicknamed Bing, grows into a thoughtful, precocious woman whose life intertwines with many of the biggest events of the twentieth century: World War II, an outbreak of polio that leaves her with an almost indiscernible limp, and the summer of love in San Francisco. Along the way, Bing explores abroad, finding romance and heartbreak in Paris, art in the Côte d’Azur, faith in Istanbul.

Returning always to the house on Esplanade, Bing has one ambition through it all, “I don’t want to grow old before I grow wise.” This is her story.

About the Author

Larry Gray has always been a writer. He supported his family as an English professor and developed his love of theatre as a published playwright and director. He has published many short stories in journals and wrote children’s stories, but never stopped writing.