But Ned is about to heed another call, the siren song of New Orleans, where the history of countless lost souls seems to rise from the steaming streets -- and where, ten years before, he ended a brief, passionate affair with a woman whose memory has haunted him ever since. Here, in a city of spirits, Ned will embrace a dead saint and a living sinner... as a beautiful ghost offers him her desire. And his destiny.

Set amid the sleepless energy and seething passion of New York and New Orleans, Madeleine's Ghost is a spellbinding novel of lost love, history, and desire -- a work of startling originality that is at once exquisitely written and compulsively readable.

"Immediately engaging... Girardi tells a satisfying, memorable tale with masterful skills."
   LOS ANGELES TIMES