As a student in Walker Percy's 1976 creative writing class, I heard firsthand his initial impressions of that remarkable woman and her son's remarkable novel. After my early review of Confederacy was published, Thelma called to thank me for my praise of the novel and to invite me to visit. We discovered that we lived only three blocks apart, and during the period when she emerged from the shadow of heavy grief that had shrouded her for a decade, we met once or twice a week to discuss literature, theater, opera, the life and career of her son, and her hopes for a movie based on the novel. In cramped, old-fashioned script she composed numerous letters and a memoir of John, which I typed. Though she rarely left home, since any movement required her to use a walker, one memorable evening a group of us escorted her to Baton Rouge for the premiere of a musical based on Confederacy. She was ecstatic over the performance and the attention she received from the director, actors, and audience.

During these years she recalled the existence of an earlier novel and located among John's effects a typescript entitled The Neon Bible. When he was fifteen and had just learned to drive, he had invited her to ride with him to Airline Highway to see something amusing. He parked in front of a monolithic concrete building and pointed to an enormous neon sign shaped like an open book, with the words "Holy Bible" on one page and "Midcity Baptist Church" on the other. Together they laughed at its tacky ostentation, but she did not know then that he had found the title and inspiration for his first sustained creative effort. About the same time he spent a few days with a classmate visiting relatives in rural Mississippi, the setting for The Neon Bible.

When Thelma suggested publishing The Neon Bible-- "after Confederacy has had its share of glory" -- lawyers reminded her that under Louisiana law (that same Napoleonic Code in which Stanley Kowalski instructs Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire), half the rights belonged to her husband's brother and his children.