Marie is very light skinned and able to pass as white, but Marcel, who is blonde and blue eyed, but with ethnic hair, features, and slightly darker skin, cannot. Cecile has borne Ferronaire two children, Marcel and his sister Marie. His mother, Cecile, is the mistress of Philippe Ferronaire, a rich French plantation owner. The story centers on Marcel, a young man who has one white parent and one parent who is half white and half black. The novel takes place in the 1840s, at which time there was a large population of free people of color living in New Orleans. Their mistresses however, were not all enslaved, some were free women of color whose families had been free for several generations. It was a common practice for the early caucasian settlers to free their children by their slave mistresses. The gens de couleur libres were the descendants of European settlers of Louisiana, particularly the French and Spanish and people of African descent. This novel is about the gens de couleur libres, or free people of color, who lived in New Orleans before the Civil War.
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