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First Place, Texas Association of Authors Award for Best Contemporary Fiction
Winner, Indie Book Award for Best Cover Design
Bronze Medal, ForeWord Reviews’ IndieFab Book of the Year Award for Literary Fiction
By day, Tiff Proulx works as a living statue, posing as the Statue of Liberty for the French Quarter’s tourist trade in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. By night, she descends into the darkness costumed as the Angel of Mercy, defending and protecting the storm refugees from the thugs who pock the city’s wayward streets. But her acts of heroism are no accident: Tiff’s days as an innocent college student came to an abrupt end after a National Guardsman, pretending to be a Good Samaritan, raped her during the height of the storm’s fury.
Tiff’s skills as a living statue include extraordinary stealth and an uncanny ability to render herself completely motionless. Using these “powers,” she transforms herself into a vigilante hero, combing the Quarter to fight evil and injustice, as well as to hunt down the man who plunged her life into despair during the storm’s darkest hours.
“Playing the Angel’s Tiff Proulx is a thinking woman’s crime fighter—a super heroine for the new millennium. In Playing the Angel, Kenneth Womack imagines a redemptive path for post-Katrina New Orleans, and costume-clad Tiff, with torch held high in hand, is its gutsy, no-holds barred standard-bearer.”—Tod Davies, author of Snotty Saves the Day: The History of Arcadia and Lily the Silent
“Put a charming vigilante to work in a ruined city, season with mystery, and add a dash of noir, and you get Kenneth Womack’s Playing the Angel, a delightful romp through the Big Easy that is fast-paced and full of surprises.”—Chad Gayle, author of Let It Be
“Chockfull of mystery and suspense, Kenneth Womack’s Playing the Angel is an old-fashioned page-turner. With characters like the fearless Tiff Proulx and her motley group of sidekicks along for the ride, Playing the Angel delivers an engrossing, unforgettable read.”—Colleen Lumadue, author of The Top of the Octagon
“With a delicious noir tone, Tiff Proulx survives Hurricane Katrina to personify the ruined city as it makes its slow recovery toward normalcy. With enough suspense to keep the pages turning, Playing the Angel is strangely soothing. . . . It leaves readers with a sense of loss as the final page is turned and we must bid farewell to this gentle character with a heart as big as the city she defends.”—Wendy Strain, US Review of Books
“Playing the Angel is an eye-opening account of the danger and desolation faced by the survivors of 2005’s unfathomable hurricane. . . . Full of rock’n’roll references, brash characters, and true-to-life action, Playing the Angel is not to be missed.”—Jude Southerland Kessler, author of The John Lennon Series
“Playing the Angel is a humdinger of a crime-thriller!”—Dave Malarkey, WISR-AM