“ Reading Madame Vieux Carré” copyright 2012 Kristin Fouque t My week started off badly. Sprinting to the phone, I sprained my right gastrocnemius and found I could no longer stand or walk without assistance. As humbling an experience as it was, I decided to accept it as an opportunity to slow down and spend some time reading. I bought Madame Vieux Carré: The French Quarter of the Twentieth Century by Scott S. Ellis as a research book. I’m writing a novel set in the Quarter in 1961 and I thought the book would be a good resource. Well, it certainly was, but it became so much more for me. While I have always loved the French Quarter of my hometown, New Orleans, I found myself falling more in love with her as I made my way through the pages of this book. Mr. Ellis did thorough research and even accounted personal experiences as an inhabitant of the neighborhood in the 1980s. As I hobbled back and forth on crutches between reading, I contemp...