George Washington Cable's Strange True Stories of Louisiana was first published in 1888. It consists of seven captivating and amazing, but still true stories set in Louisiana. The book starts with Cable’s telling his readers how he acquired these other seven stories. These are true stories from people who lived in Creole Louisianna (from 1782 to after the Civil War), a time hardly intelligible to us now. That’s why the stories must have been strange to George Cable himself, because rather long time had passed even before his birth, then the stories impressed him a lot.
The first story “The Young Aunt with White Hair" is a tragic one and depicts the horrors experienced by a young woman on the long journey to New Orleans from Germany: she was robbed by sailors on the ship; saw murder of her husband and baby; almost became a chief's dinner. She underwent many severe trials that her hair eventually turned snow white in a few hours, instead of decades, and she never recovered from the experience. In the second story we feel no more tragic, but bright and happy humor and suspense that make "The Two Sisters" just plain fun to read. Two teenage girls Francoise and Suzanne, that are totally different in character, travel through the "wilds" of Atchafalaya swamp to North Louisiana in 1795. The next story "Alix de Morainville" reads like a fairy tale: the birth-deformed baby farmed out to a peasant family, many other adventurous events and eventually introduction to Queen Marie Antoinette; Aleix's grand wedding at Notre Dame Cathedral; the beginning of the French Revolution; death of her first husband; rescue; and flight first to England and then to Louisiana. The other story "Salome Muller, The White Slave," tells the story about the German woman who lost most of her family on the way to Louisianna. Salome became a slave. Only in some about 20 years her case was taken to the State Supreme Court by her family. So Salom was ultimately released. "The Haunted House in Royal Street" tells about the house of Madam Lalaurie. Once when the fire started the owner tried to save only her possessions, but not her slaves. And the last story "War Diary of a Union Woman in the South" is a diary of a Union woman who lived in the South during the Civil War.