Yellow jack cover

Yellow jack

by Josh Russell

"Yellow Jack is a ribald, picaresque trip through an 1840s New Orleans saturated with sex, drugs, death, and corruption. It is the story of Claude Marchand, an apprentice to Louis Daguerre, who discovers the magic art of photography when he hides a broken thermometer in a cabinet and finds that the mercury fumes bring out images etched by the sun in metal plates. After a falling-out with Daguerre, Marchand flees from Paris to New Orleans where he becomes the first daguerreotypist in America and he gets hopelessly entangled with both a voodoo-adept octoroon mistress and the erotically precocious daughter of a prominent New Orleans family. As the city is ravaged each summer by yellow fever (yellow jack), Marchand's miraculous art is tested by death, politics, and jealousy. Mercury drives him mad, but his work will nevertheless make him immortal, after a fashion."--BOOK JACKET.

Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?