Pullman — Debra Lee

Booze, sex, and jazz are prevalent in the New Orleans of the Roaring Twenties. One might expect to find this in the seedier sides of the city, but naï ve Pullman Porter Eugene Ste. Cherie encounters it away from the tracks.As they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Eugene deboards the train to assist a white passenger and is rewarded by being asked to work in one of the luxurious lakefront casinos near Spanish Fort during his off time. Though prohibition is in effect, he discovers that alcohol flows like the waters in the many canals running between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. Eugene follows the path back into the city along the lavish boulevards and avenues as he continues to tend bar at the city' s many social events. His wife, Eartha, keeps her eyes on the money he makes tending bar, overlooking the manipulative secrets and lies surrounding him.Eugene is a wanted man, not only for his skills as a scrupulous and skilled bartender but also for his Creole good looks. Unaware that Black men around him believe him to be a prostitute for the white gentlemen, he evades seduction by sheer luck, the prayers of his grandmother, and the influence of his deceased grandfather' s white wife. Both women are awaiting a Ste. Cherie heir to carry on the lineage of the man they loved.Even when Eartha learns, “ Those men that you worked for this summer, they made you do things with them – things that we do when we' re naked and alone?” she believes he' s been forced to participate. Then she discovers that his trysts are closer to home.