A freelance writer and journalist, Vicenta (“Vicky”) Lumière has moved beyond her upbringing in the diverse Irish Chan­nel neighborhood of New Orleans. But a visit to her childhood friend Lonnie Cavanaugh in the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women brings back a flood of memories.In Navel of the Moon, the follow-up to her acclaimed debut The Fifth Sun, Mary Helen Lagasse turns to the 1950s and 60s, where a young Vicky learns that the complicated people that we become as adults and the complicated world that adults create are shaped by events in childhood. The adults around her, beginning with her Mexican grandmother, Mimy, the family storyteller—who says she is from the “navel of the moon”—often confound and sometimes trouble Vicky. Yet Vicky’s strength of character is pro­foundly affected by the complexity of life, and in particular that of her troubled childhood friend Lonnie and of Valentina Dreyfus, the Holocaust survivor who becomes Vicky's closest confidante.

MARY HELEN LAGASSE’s debut novel, The Fifth Sun (Curbstone, 2004), won the Miguel Mármol Prize, the Premio Aztlán Literary Prize, Independent Publisher Best Multicultural Fiction Award (2005), and was a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award (2005). Her stories and articles have appeared in numerous publications, including the New Orleans Times-Picayune and New Orleans Magazine. She lives in her native New Orleans.