Summary: A tale of petty and systemic graft interwoven with a troubled family, an FBI investigation and a budding love affair, all centered around a Vietnamese grocery in East New Orleans.

Gentilly Terrace was developed on high ground overlooking Lake Pontchartrain on the east side of New Orleans, literally on terraced blocks. Once a suburban community of Arts and Crafts bungalows built in the 1920’s, the neighborhood had declined as people moved further out. But this was the home of Jerry Sonthonax, a newly elected tax assessor for that part of New Orleans. Sonthonax lived on the edge of financial ruin, “borrowing” from client settlements and escrow accounts in his legal practice, trying to hit it big at the local racetrack. After a loss that nearly wiped him out, a racetrack buddy offered a different kind of tip. A Vietnamese grocery on the east side of his district was rumored to be running an illegal lottery, and might be a source of payoffs to maintain a low assessment.

Sonthonax goes to his mentor, Burton Clayton, assessor for the central business district, who has lined his pockets well in this way. All this goes through a middleman, Glenn Hornacek, who would present himself as a consultant who could “negotiate” lower assessments for a fee that he and Clayton would share. Sonthonax persuades the two to assist him in setting up a similar arrangement starting with the grocery.

Unbeknownst to them, FBI agent Magot Hoang is surveilling the grocery, using her Vietnamese language sills to translate the wiretaps. In the process, she hears the owner’s daughter trying to complain about an outrageous assessment increase, bringing Sonthonax name across her radar. Meanwhile, she has fallen in love with a local police officer, one who does off-duty security.

Lecky and Hildy Calloway are New Orleans socialites mostly by virtue of Hildy and her family’s wealth, which Lecky lives off of, while handling legal settlements for insurance companies. It’s a troubled family. Daughter Caroline has had substance abuse problems and is sent off to a residential facility, where she becomes involved with her counselor, arriving home pregnant until getting an abortion. Lecky is a hen-pecked husband increasing aware that he is gay and is starting to explore New Orleans gay life, including a one off with a salesclerk name Peterbilt, who keeps turning up, and also happens to be Caroline’s drug dealer, and the plaintiff in an insurance case Lecky is asked to handle for a minor head injury from a fallen sign at–you guessed it–the Vietnamese grocery.

And, if you hadn’t guessed it, the grocery is the scene of the story’s climax, and everyone except Clayton is there. For me, it was the predictability of this novel that made it ho-hum. The descriptions of this area of New Orleans are lush. At the same time, the description of the life of Gentilly Terrace, after the beginning of the story, was non-existent as the action of the story shifts to this store on its edges. Even the Vietnamese enclave might have been treated with greater depth. This work, a second novel, strikes me as the work of someone developing his craft, following a John Grisham-type path after a law career. I found the parts that connected to the cultural life of a part of New Orleans about which I knew nothing to be fascinating and wonder if a more skillful weaving of setting and plot may have made this a more interesting work.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program. ( )

The Prophets of Gentilly Terrace was an interesting historical fiction. I enjoy reading books set in Louisiana especially historical fiction because I am from Louisiana. It took a while for me to be able to get into the book. I am not sure if it was the writing style or the subject matter. If you like historical fiction and literary fiction, you will possibly enjoy The Prophets of Gentilly Terrace.
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The description of the plot—“a multilayered story of the tragedy, triumph, and peculiarity of New Orleans”—made this book seem as though it would be a meaty and engaging read, but the writing was so wordy it was nearly impossible to wade through. ( )

If you seek an excruciatingly detailed account of the development and history of neighborhoods in New Orleans, this book might be for you. We get all these details as the bulk of our introduction to several crooked tax assessors and partners in crime. Wilson ties to impress us with his vocabulary and sentence structure; in doing so, he forces us to translate his writing into more easily comprehensible English. He doesn't appear to trust the reader to perceive what's going on in the story: he'll show us an interaction, sometimes overexplaining as he goes, and then provide us with a summary of what he was trying to get across. I managed eighty-some pages and did not finish the book. ( )

Set in New Orleans, this novel follows several characters in actions centered on a Vietnamese grocery store suspected of harboring an illegal lottery. Local politicians are trying to cash in on this deal. Lawyers are also involved. An FBI agent is charged with investigating the suspected crime. So many interconnected threads. Unfortunately I did not like the author's writing style. It seemed very wordy and made it hard for me to follow the story. ( )