Souchon to FPK

Keyes was dedicated to make her stories sound authentic and in her mind the way she needed to achieve that authenticity was to do a lot of research. There are boxes and boxes of correspondence between Keyes and just regular people of Louisiana. Letters inquiring about dress or asking for small items people could send her were a very common thing for Keyes and her letters can be found at numerous universities and libraries across the country.

FPK to Souchon

We can even see her extensive research and correspondence in the forewords to her books, of which she is known to write very lengthy ones as well as bibliographies in the back of many of her books. Even in her foreword to “Dinner at Antoine’s”, which the three-page introduction even she admitted was a much shorter foreword due to criticism by reviewers, she thanks fifteen people that helped her with her novel. Of those thanks she mentioned that some were inquiries about laws, diseases, songs and more.