Nina LaCour says her new novel, Meet Me in the Garden, was inspired by her family’s migration from New Orleans to Long Beach and explores race, gender and sexuality across several decades, beginning in World War II and extending beyond the 1965 Watts riots, per dailynews.com.
LaCour, who lives in San Francisco, drew on family stories, interviews and archival research to shape the novel’s historical detail.
Her grandparents left Jim Crow New Orleans for Long Beach; relatives included the first Black superintendent of a Columbia record plant and a relative who, despite being light-skinned enough to pass, insisted on claiming his race. Those family experiences informed LaCour’s depiction of Los Angeles as a place of opportunity that still carried the prejudices migrants sought to escape.
The novel follows Odette Honore from New Orleans to Los Angeles, charting her life from adolescence to parenthood. Odette’s cousin Delphine passes as white after moving to Los Angeles, while Odette — secretly in a passionate relationship with a woman — marries to conform and raise a family. LaCour said she deliberately emphasised the family’s love and community ties and placed significant weight on the sacrifices Odette makes to protect her children and remain within the family unit.
LaCour researched medical records, street maps and Black press archives, including The California Eagle, to recreate mid-20th-century settings and social constraints. She considered incorporating real-life family tragedies but chose to alter some events to avoid making the book unduly bleak and to allow her characters happier outcomes.
The author described the novel as domestic in focus, paying close attention to art, music, cooking and homecraft as forms of creative expression for women limited by societal expectations. Odette becomes a painter in the story; LaCour said writing those artistic scenes felt immersive and visceral after five years of drafting, handwriting large sections and visiting museums for inspiration.
LaCour will discuss Meet Me in the Garden at Bel Canto Books in Long Beach on Tuesday, Aug. 11 at 7pm, appearing with her father, Jacques. The interview with Stuart Miller has been edited for length and clarity.
•Featured image: ‘Meet Me in the Garden’ by Nina LaCour/Kristyn Stroble and Flatiron Books