THE QUEEN OF THE CROSSROADS. A Novel of Inherited Power - Amy Wertz

When folklorist Jazmin Marrow arrives in New Orleans, she expects performance-ritual repackaged for tourists, belief turned into spectacle. She doesn't expect the city to choose her. The prayers start quietly. A candle that burns wrong. Offerings left where no one saw them placed. Strangers who look at her like they already know.

Then the Queen dies.

What Jazmin thought was legend reveals itself as inheritance. Marie Laveau was never just a woman-but a role. A lineage. A system that binds itself to someone new when the city needs it most. And now it has chosen her. At first, the power feels like purpose. She can hear the prayers. Ease suffering. Carry what others cannot. But the work doesn't stop. And neither do the voices.

As devotion floods the city, Jazmin's transformation accelerates-stronger, deeper, less her with every passing day. The shrines expand. The network grows. The pressure builds.
And the only thing holding the city together... is what she's becoming.

But the mantle doesn't just grant power. It consumes. Her memories begin to vanish. Her identity fractures. And the longer she serves, the less of Jazmin remains. Refusing to disappear, she fights to hold onto herself-to find a way to be both woman and Queen. But the role was never meant to be shared. And once the city takes everything, there will be nothing left to remember who she was.

THE QUEEN OF THE CROSSROADS is a literary urban fantasy novel about spiritual labor, memory, and the cost of becoming necessary in a world where someone must carry what no one else can.

For readers of The City We Became, Mexican Gothic, and Ninth House.