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Rosemary Poole-Carter writes under the influence of the Southern Gothic, history, mystery, and the visual and performing arts. In her novels Only Charlotte, Women of Magdalene, What Remains, and Juliette Ascending, all set in and around New Orleans, Louisiana, she explores the uneasy lives of characters in the post-Civil War American South. For her novel-in-progress, she returns in imagination to her home state of Texas, bringing her protagonist to the island city of Galveston to confront personal demons as the Great Storm of 1900 hurtles towards the Gulf Coast.
A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Rosemary was a long-time resident of Houston, where she practiced her devotion to reading and writing with students of a community college system. In recent years, she has lived and written by the Eno River in Durham, North Carolina, sojourned in Georgia, and now resides in Okemos, Michigan. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and the Historical Novel Society and a passionate supporter of public libraries and independent bookstores.
Novels
Only Charlotte
Set in an atmosphere of misogyny and racism in post-Civil War New Orleans, Only Charlotte is a tale of entanglements, both amorous and murderous.
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Women of Magdalene
After years of serving as a wartime surgeon, Robert Mallory is accustomed to soldiers missing limbs. At the Magdalene Ladies Lunatic Asylum, he learns that the women are missing pieces, not of their bodies, but of their lives.
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What Remains
In November, 1865, still mourning her fiance's death, Isabelle Ross joins with journalist Paul Delahoussaye at Belle Ombre Plantation to untangle a murderous web of secrets and lies.
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Juliette Ascending
Romance and suspense combine at an 1874 Mardi Gras ball when fifteen-year-old Juliette Carondel meets her forbidden love . . .
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Plays
The Little Death
In 1880's New Orleans, beautiful Hesper Darnelle enters a dangerous liaison with her guardian, Professor Meredith, then a flirtation with a young man, Alan Corbay. To protect his interest in Hesper, Meredith invites her worldly cousin Vara to join the household as his ward's companion.
Vara glides among the other characters like Iago in a bustle, leaving disaster in her wake. And Hesper must find a way to break with Meredith, Alan, and Vara to save herself.
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“The story of Oh! . . . the mood of old New Orleans, but the spirit of the play, centered as it is on the experience of women, is modern; at its best, The Little Death transcends romantic intrigue to sharply explore double sexual standards and the ‘limitations’ that women even today must struggle against.” Houston Press
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For production information please contact the author.
The Familiar
Two sisters haunted by the past, one man haunted by desire, gather in a house possessed by The Familiar.
There’s something unsettling under the bed. Elinor wants it out, Cissie wants it hidden, and Sean would rather concentrate on possibilities on top of the bed. As Elinor pulls old possessions and dusty objects from under the bed, these become props for improvisations among Elinor, Cissie, and Sean as the three of them maneuver around one another—provoking or tantalizing, wary of touch and entanglements—playing ever closer to what haunts them.
For production information please contact the author.
Mossy Cape
Introduce young audiences to King Lear with this captivating romance. No, the king doesn't appear, but the plot is similar because Shakespeare and Rosemary Poole-Carter both adapted their scripts from the ancient legend about the foolish old monarch and his three daughters.
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The "king" in this drama is Ole Daddy, who rules his plantation from his wicker chair on the veranda. Deciding it's time to turn the land over to his daughters, he asks each to tell him how much she loves him. After the elder two, Ruby and Garnet, gush with false sentiment, the youngest, Candra, falters not knowing how to express her honest feelings of filial love. Her answer: "I love you more than biscuits love butter."
Misunderstanding her devotion, Ole Daddy gives his plantation to Ruby and Garnet, who promptly turn Candra out into the swamps. And before long they turn Ole Daddy out, too. Soon Candra meets a "magic woman" who gives her a cloak covered in Spanish moss--the Mossy Cape--and magical things happen.
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The story blends the King Lear legend with the Cinderella story to create a happy ending for Candra, her Ole Daddy, and her young suitor Preston, who falls in love with her at a ball.
For production information please contact the author.