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BITTER ROOTS is a magical tale of sex, voodoo and death that reveal the plight of a Louisiana family of women plagued by a voodoo curse that has killed off the men they’ve loved. After the days of slavery, disgusted that their wives had given birth to mulatto children not their own, angry former slaves put a curse on the slave owner who frequently took their women to the intimacy of his bed. Generations later, family matriarch Elizabeth Lafayette’s fourteen-year-old daughter Sadie gives birth to her own illegitimate mulatto child. This signals the curse to strike with renewed vengeance. Elizabeth’s use of a black magic spell to protect precocious Sadie goes awry when the local root doctor’s special ‘love’ potion is secretly added to the mix. Spanning three generations, this heart-pounding adventure begins with a troubled birth in the back room of an old country home. Then weaves through one emotionally charged episode after another until it dramatically unfolds on a storm-washed street in San Francisco. There the curse’s new victim pays the price for his overpowering attraction to the deadly charms of Sadie’s love-cursed daughter, Jeanette Banks.
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About the Author
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Reginald Wyatt is the author of many computer oriented publications. His love for adventure, personal relationships and the supernatural mark the flavor of most of his work. He writes from his Southern California home where true life adventures and a keen imagination provide the rich material for his intimate tales that push the reader to the edge of passion, love, sex and intrigue.
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Excerpt from the novel Bitter Roots
Chapter One 1949
Sadie Lafayette screamed once again. The oppressive heat that engulfed the back bedroom of her old Louisiana home only intensified the pain of her contractions. She wrestled through a tortuously restless night. A twinge deep in her groin woke her just before the dawn broke through. In a sudden panic, she cried out, more from the fear of what was about to happen than from the ensuing pain. But that was seven hours ago, long before the sun burned off the thick morning fog and warmed the magnolias and sweet jasmine that grew close to the house. Their heady fragrance, stirred by afternoon breezes drifted through the opened window, but did little to overcome the human scent of Sadie as she sweltered in the midday heat. With her labor now in full force, waves of pain contorted her young face. From her parched lips, she half cried and mumbled prayers that begged her mother, Elizabeth, to make the pains stop.
Emotionally and physically drained, Elizabeth too was in pain. Hers, however, was an emotional pain - one that did not make her grimace and cry out. Usually, she could mask her pain with her warm and welcoming smile. This morning, however, Elizabeth had nothing to smile about nor had there been since she first discovered that her youngest daughter, Sadie was pregnant. With two daughters to rear and with no man living in the house, Elizabeth, did not have an easy life. She spent long hours bent over her wash tubs in the back yard. This hard work left little time and no extra money to handle the unexpected addition of Sadie’s new baby.
Unlike most of the women who lived in this rural community, Elizabeth chose to wash and iron the clothes of her white neighbors. She preferred this rather than to labor under the merciless sun in the cane fields. Although the domestic work allowed her to work closer to her home, at the end of her long day she was none-the-less exhausted. That morning, already worn out from the yesterday’s wash load, she hurriedly sat up on the side of her bed the moment she heard Sadie’s | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||