Biography

Vicki Salloum’s short stories have been included in the anthologies When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, Pass/Fail: 32 Stories About Teaching and Voices from the Couch. An excerpt from her novel in progress, Faulkner & Friends, appeared in the November 2006 anthology Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum: Critical and Creative Responses to Everette Maddox. She resides in New Orleans.

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A Prayer to Saint Jude: A Novella

It is a dusty spring morning in the Big Easy and Willow Jewett is on her way to Orye Majeen’s house to tutor the African-American short order cook in remedial English. From this innocent beginning, the 32-year-old white middle-class teacher finds herself plunged into the nightmare world of the New Orleans street drug trade.<\p>

As Willow, 33-year-old Orye and his neighbors struggle to keep the thugs from terrorizing their Sixth Ward neighborhood, they come up with a plan to redeem and revitalize the deteriorating area by creating a gourmet café in an abandoned corner bar.

When the drug gang retaliates and all hell breaks loose, Orye contrives to impose a street justice that is as brilliant as it is heroic. Willow responds with a prayer to Jude, the saint of impossible causes. The result of this alliance will inspire and confirm the power of the human spirit.