Secessia / Kent Wascom.

New Orleans, May 1862. The largest city in the confederacy has fallen to Union troops under the soon-to-be-infamous General Benjamin "the Beast" Butler. In this city ravaged by war and struck by vice and disease, twelve-year-old Joseph Woolsack disappears from his home. His mother, Elise, a mixed-race woman passing for white must struggle to maintain a hold on her sanity, her son, and her own precarious station. Mired in the conspiracy and intrigue surrounding the occupation of the city is Dr. Emile Sabatier, a fanatical physician who adores disease. In a conquered city, passion and greed run riot.