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The Sound of Building Coffins is a story of catastrophe and rebirth
in the City of New Orleans -- imagined at the turn of the century when
jazz was an outlaw art form, Vodou a commonplace faith, and issues
of race, culture and prejudice in the American paradigm were
saplings just beginning to take shape.




Louis Maistros is a longtime resident of the New Orleans 8th Ward neighborhood. A former forklift operator and self-taught writer with no formal training, his work has appeared in publications such as the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Baltimore City Paper. Along with his wife Elly, he currently owns and operates Louie's Juke Joint , a combination jazz record shop and Vodou botanica.

His New Orleans historical novel, The Sound of Building Coffins, was published by The Toby Press in March of 2009 and is currently in its third printing. It was nominated for an SIBA Award and has garnered rave reviews from publications such as The New Orleans Times-Picayune, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The St. Petersburg Times, Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, The Roanoke Times, Kirkus Review, The Times of Acadiana, The Anniston Star, The Alabama Press-Register  and Baltimore Magazine among others. It has also garnered endorsements from respected authors such as Peter Straub, Donald Harington and Poppy Z. Brite. A paperback edition is scheduled for release in March of 2010.

Since the release of The Sound of Building Coffins, Maistros has been a featured speaker at the Tennessee Williams Festival, the Louisiana Book Festival, the Shreveport Book Festival and

Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island for "The Katrina, Katrina Project."

He is mildly self-conscious about the fact that he shares a birthday with Lee Harvey Oswald, and is currently working out a conspiracy theory about that. That conspiracy theory is the driving force behind his next novel, Holy Meaux, which he is currently at work on.











































































Read praise for The Sound of Building Coffins here.

Read excerpts from The Sound of Building Coffins here.
Visit the Spiritworld for a pictorial introduction to the characters









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