Coffee Pot Book Tour: David Loux / Chateau Laux

June 07, 2021

Coffee Pot Book Tour: David Loux / Chateau Laux

Welcome to a stop on the Coffee Pot Book Tour! Today we are happy to host Chateau Laux by David Loux and we have a great guest post to share! Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and find a comfy spot to read!

Book Details

Book Title: Chateau Laux

Author: David Loux

Publication Date: April 6, 2021

Publisher: Wire Gate Press

Page Length: 292 Pages

Genre: Historical/Literary Fiction

Author Bio:

David Loux is a short story writer who has published under pseudonym and served as past board member of California Poets in the Schools. Chateau Laux is his first novel. He lives in the Eastern Sierra with his wife, Lynn.

Social Media Links:

Website Twitter Goodreads Amazon Author Page

The Blurb:

A young entrepreneur from a youthful Philadelphia, chances upon a French aristocrat and his family living on the edge of the frontier. Born to an unwed mother and raised by a disapproving and judgmental grandfather, he is drawn to the close-knit family. As part of his courtship of one of the patriarch’s daughters, he builds a château for her, setting in motion a sequence of events he could not have anticipated.

Guest Post by David Loux:

My inspiration for Chateau Laux came as a result of extensive research I had done on the origin of the Laux surname for a family reunion in York, Pennsylvania, in 2010. What I discovered was that a young man from a very unusual French family had made the arduous Atlantic crossing alone, in an attempt to start a new life in a new land. The man’s French name was Pierre Laux. While it is not recorded as such, his given name was most likely Jean-Pierre, as this was a name he apparently gave to all of his male sons. What he hoped to find in the new world can only be guessed, but we know what he came from, which was a world torn apart by religious differences. We can only imagine that he sought a measure of personal freedom, little realizing that people who came to the new world brought their continental baggage with them. He couldn’t have known the kind of heartbreak that awaited him.

Clues to the unusual nature of Pierre’s family are in the genealogical record, where we find that the first several generations in the colony had female children that they named Maria Magdalena. This discovery literally made the hairs on my neck stand up, as Mary Magdalene was considered to be a fallen woman by both Catholics and Protests in the eighteenth century, and few devout Christians would have named their girls after her. Further reading revealed that the family came from a part of the world where, according to legend, Mary Magdalene was said to have lived out her life after the crucifixion of Christ; where an early group of Christians known as the Cathars revered her; and where annual processions extoll her virtues to this day. The Lauxes were Reformed, which were Calvinists. But their reverence of Mary Magdalene suggests they were perhaps something more.

Once I had accumulated all this information, I still faced the challenge of tying it together and I had the epiphany that I could use the metaphor of the château for that purpose. To me, Lawrence Kraymer, who was Catharine’s husband in the novel, was symbolic of the new colonial spirit, which faced daunting challenges at the time. Lawrence was born to an unwed mother, much as the early colonials must have felt increasingly isolated from their European roots. He was abused by a grandfather, who was in some ways a personification of a hostile and unforgiving environment. And in his search for identity, he grasped at a relic of a European past that did not do very well in the colonies.

It is my opinion that there are some stories that need to be told. They lay in wait, forgotten in dusty archives, yearning for the light of a new day. To me, Chateau Laux is such a story. I hated to resurrect the characters, knowing full well what fates must await. But to me, they begged for the chance to live again and I hope I have done them justice.

Thank you, David for that wonderful insight into your book. Readers I know you are going to want to check this out. I've include buy links below. The button with take you to Amazon US.