Madeleine’s Ghost by Robert Girardi
A Novel of Ghosts, Miracles, Love … and Archives!

“Today, as the sun sets over Brooklyn, I am thinking of New Orleans.” That sentence sets the tone for Robert Girardi’s 1995 novel, Madeleine’s Ghost. As the story opens, Ned Conti, the narrator, is learning to live with the ghost in his Brooklyn apartment. The manifestations vary: one night dozens of stones materialize near the ceiling and plummet to the living room floor, coins on his dresser are arranged in the shape of a crescent, a bookcase full of books creaks across the room menacingly before toppling over. Then one afternoon, Ned sees an exotic woman in the courtyard with his neighbors, and hears her singing a soft song, though he can’t quite make out the words. When he asks his neighbors about their friend, they say, “We’ve been out here alone … Just us, all day.” Are you hooked yet?

Meanwhile, Ned has only six months remaining in the six years that he was allowed to complete his doctoral thesis, and his part-time temporary work is hardly supporting his East Village nightlife habit. So what better to do than answer a classified ad for a historical research project that is described only as being “of grave spiritual significance to the future of Brooklyn”? St. Basil’s Cathedral hires Ned to scour their “archives” for records of the life of Sister Januarius, a nun who arrived from New Orleans in 1846. These archives are located in the church crypt, a place “full of moldering U-Haul boxes. About thirty of them are stacked against the walls … Another dozen are lumped together in the center of the room.” But Brooklyn needs a saint, and Ned Conti needs a stipend. So he goes about researching the evidence that is necessary to nominate an individual for sainthood, namely the working of miracles, despite the fact that the first document he extracts from those U-Haul boxes crumbles in his hands.

Like Sister Januarius, Ned has connections to New Orleans, having attended Loyola University of the South. His former girlfriend, Antoinette, has been on his mind more and more as the ghost’s presence grows stronger. At one point, as the scent of magnolia blossoms moves through his apartment from room to room over the course of a few days, and he cannot resist the temptation to call Antoinette and revisit their time in the Crescent City. Before long, she’s back in his life in the flesh.

In his first novel, Girardi manages to pull the stories of Ned and Antoinette, Sister Januarius, and the ghost of Madeleine together flawlessly. The story elements that sound improbable, at best, are made convincing by Girardi’s note-perfect depictions of New York and Louisiana, and a host of plausibly quirky supporting characters. He writes about the finer points of Catholicism, an air boat ride through the swamps of Louisiana, and a case of hepatitis with equal aplomb. Without giving away too much, I’ll reveal that Ned learns how there is more than one way for the past to haunt us, and how sometimes it is the past that is begging to be set free.