From the Publisher:
Meticulously drawn in lyrical prose, this tale of death and rebirth, devastation and redemption, will draw you into a world of beauty and pain, as alluring as it is dangerous. It is 1891 in New Orleans, and young Typhus Morningstar cycles under the light of the half-moon to fulfill his calling, rebirthing aborted fetuses in the fecund waters of the Mississippi River. He cannot know that nearby, events are unfolding that will change his life forever - events that were set in motion by a Voodoo curse gone awry 40 years before he was born. All will be irrevocably changed by a demonic struggle, and by the sound of a new musical form: jazz

Quotes:

"Louis Maistros has written a lyrical, complex, and brave novel that takes enormous risks and pulls them all off. He is a writer to watch and keep reading, a writer to cherish."
– Peter Straub

"A thing of wonder, unlike anything in our literature. It startles. It stuns. It stupefies. No novel since CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES has done such justice to New Orleans. If Franz Kafka had been able to write like Peter Straub, this might have been the result."
– Donald Harington,
Winner of the Robert Penn Warren Award and the Oxford-American Lifetime Achievement Award.

“The Sound of Building Coffins is easily one of the finest and truest pieces of New Orleans fiction I've ever read.”
- Poppy Z. Brite

“One has to write with considerable authenticity to pull off a story steeped in magic and swamp water that examines race and class, death and rebirth, Haitian voodoo, and the beginnings of jazz in 1891 New Orleans...The plot is complex and magical, grounded in the history of the city, without being overly sentimental. There is a comfort with death as a part of life in this work that reveals deep feeling for the city and its past....Highly recommended for all fiction collections, especially where there is an interest in jazz."
- Library Journal