Last year, LSU creative writing professor Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s historical novel became a critically acclaimed national bestseller.
Set in 19th century New Orleans, Ruffin’s novel “The American Daughters” aimed to shine a light on the often overlooked achievements of the women from the era.
“The book is really about community, friendship and sisterhood … It is a deep topic, but it’s also a lot of fun,” Ruffin said.
The book follows a young enslaved girl named Ady as she grows up. Ady and her mother are brought to New Orleans in the 1840s, where she learns about and joins the American Daughters, a spy ring fighting for freedom, liberation and a new future for America.
“The American Daughters” represented Louisiana at the Library of Congress’ 2024 National Book Festival, an event that unites bestselling authors from all across the country to share their work and allow for panel discussions, meet and greets and the signing of thousands of books.
“It was a great privilege that my little book had the opportunity to travel all the way up to Washington, D.C. to represent the city and the state,” Ruffin said.
Out of Ruffin’s three publications so far, “The American Daughters” is his first to become a national bestseller, with the American Book Association having it as one of the top sellers last year. The book was also on lists such as the Kirkus Reviews’ Best Book of the Year and Electric Lit’s Best Novels Of 2024.
All of Ruffin’s books have been New York Times Editor’s Choice selections. Ruffin himself has been the recipient of the Louisiana Writer Award and the Iowa Review Award in fiction, winner of the Faulkner Society’s William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition and has made appearances in literary reviews across the country.
Roy Haggerty, LSU’s executive vice president, provost and chief academic officer, said he highly recommends “The American Daughters” and is proud to support creative work such as Ruffin’s.
“This is a really important part of the human experience that universities should nurture,” Haggerty said.
Ruffin said he began research for what would become the novel on his own accord in 2004. He had not heard much about the contribution of New Orleans during the Civil War, so he started going through archives to better understand his city’s history. He began to speculate that New Orleans lacked the sizable battles of other southern cities due to a large population of spies. Ruffin said it wasn’t until years later that he began to write “The American Daughters” and that all of his prior research was done out of his own personal desire to learn more about his community and its history.
One World, Ruffin’s publisher who he said he greatly appreciates, anticipated so much success that they had Ruffin sign 5,000 loose-leaf pages to be later put into books. One World then sent him on a book tour across the country, where Ruffin went to book festivals, universities and book signings.
Ruffin said that many women’s stories throughout history have gone undocumented, pushing him even further to tell their stories. Due to the lack of records, Ruffin said he had to speculate on his character’s personalities and diction. He thought that his ancestors would be similar to his mother, grandmother and aunts, and suddenly, by tapping into his life experiences, he was able to personify his characters much better.
Since the story is set through the 1840s-60s, Ruffin said he drew influence from authors like Toni Morrison, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf to create a voice that sounded like it could have been from over a hundred years ago. Ruffin said he found some playfulness writing this way, comparing it to musicians who cover a song with their own spin on it.
Ruffin also credits playwright August Wilson, who wrote many plays set in his hometown of Pittsburgh during different decades of the 20th century. Ruffin has done something similar in his work by setting all of his books in New Orleans in varying time periods.
His first book, “We Cast A Shadow,” is set in the future; “The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You: Stories” is set in the present, and “The American Daughters” is set in the distant past. Ruffin is currently working on a fourth book set in New Orleans during World War II that revolves around women’s involvement in fighting for freedom all around the world.
“My goals are interesting because they’re always kind of patriotic,” Ruffin said. “Because I think that we Americans are really good at standing up for our rights and fighting for freedom.”
Ruffin’s intention in writing “The American Daughters” was to tell the stories of the women in Louisiana who supported the fight for their country and freedom. However, Ruffin said that as a man, many people did not expect him to have written a book like this. He thinks this because of the lack of effort made by others to pay more respect to the women they care about.
Ruffin recognized his mother as an inspiration for this book and said she has enjoyed it immensely. Other women have gone to social media to commend Ruffin and thank him for his writing. Ruffin even had fans at events all around the country say they were pleased to see a part of Louisiana’s history that is not often touched on.
“I want to give a gift to the community I love and the people I love, which is – of course – my ancestors but also New Orleans, and Louisiana and America,” Ruffin said.