Chateau Laux
By David Loux
By David Loux
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.
Publication Date: April 6, 2021
Publisher: Wire Gate Press
Page Length: 292 Pages
Genre: Historical/Literary Fiction
GUEST POST
One of the important historical aspects of Chateau Laux is the complicated role that religion played in southern France over the course of many centuries. As a species we appear to be hardwired for story, and religion is nothing if it’s not a good story. The problem is that when stories compete, there are problems. With religious competition comes apprehension, which leads to superstition and fear. With fear comes intolerance, which condones atrocities, and religious wars have been known to be particularly brutal.
By the second century of the common era, the Romans had more or less suppressed pagan religions such as Druidism, but the new faith they ushered in had a lot of competition. Roman Catholicism was not the only faith claiming New Testament provenance, and there were several Christian groups with wildly different theologies that proliferated in the greater Mediterranean region. Catharism, for instance, had a trinitarian doctrine that would have been unrecognizable to Romans of the time. Then, the Protestant Reformation added additional nuance to the concept of Christianity. Beliefs are not just ideas. They are stories by which people define themselves and by which they live. They have roots that run deep and which often persist in one form or another. They can bring people together or set them apart.
Of particular interest to Chateau Laux were the centuries of conflict brought on by these religious differences. Most people are familiar with France’s harsh treatment of its Protestants, which drove many of its fellow countrymen abroad. But its earlier treatment of Cathars was far worse. Enabled by the French crown, the Pope mounted the Albigensian Crusade, which pitted one Christian against another. Entire villages were massacred due to allegations of religious heresy. In 1209, the Papal Legate Arnaud Amaury uttered the famous words “Kill them all. God will know his own,” whereupon a church packed with Catholic and Cathar refugees was burned to the ground.
We Americans have a youthful history that goes back only about 250 years. As such, we all too frequently find it difficult to understand a cultural longevity that spans a millennia. We tend to be forward looking and can overlook the hold that a persistent past can have on a people who have been indigenous for a very long time. We may find it difficult to understand how a religion such as Catharism, which was thought to have been extinguished in the fourteenth century, could still find a place in the hearts and minds of a few tenacious souls.
Before its brutal suppression, Catharism had a wide following throughout the Languedoc and southern France in general. Women played a prominent role, and many noble families of the Languedoc had Cathar mothers, wives and daughters. Additionally, Catharism had deep roots in regional mythos. According to legend, Mary Magdalene spent her remaining years, after the crucifixion of Christ, in the Mediterranean region of southern France, and Cathars revered her in the same way that other Christians worshipped Christ.
Interesting enough, French Protestantism had much the same geographical footprint as the previous Catharism. There was a time when Cathars and Catholics might have occupied the same household. In Chateau Laux, I envision all three faiths in the same family. While a bit of a stretch, perhaps, this is certainly not outside the bounds of possibility. As a friend of mine who lived in Toulouse once said, “This part of the world has been a crossroads for a long time. The people who live here have learned to get along by keeping their secrets well.”
In the New World, the Laux family had the opportunity to thrive in isolation. But no isolation is complete, and a marriageable daughter introduces the risks associated with a suitor unfamiliar with a family legacy that had evolved over many centuries. His blunders are tragic. They have far-reaching consequences. But in a new world filled with uncommon possibility, how he fares will be subject to what Morris Warden, one of the characters in the novel, calls “the principle of elusive inevitability,” which is the notion that apparent inevitability is in fact subject to so many variables that what ultimately happens is probably something you failed to consider in the first place.
David Loux
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.
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Thank you to Candlelight Reading for this opportunity to express some of the background to Chateau Laux! David Loux.
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