Kate Chopin: Desiree’s Baby Kate Chopin, born Katherine O’Flaherty was an American writer who is best known for her major work The Awakening which was published in 1899. Chopin was born in St. Louis to her father an Irish immigrant, and her mother whom was of French descent. Although Chopin’s father died in a train wreck when she was four years old, she grew up surrounded by “loving, intelligent, and independent women” (Baym and Levine 420). At the young age of nineteen, Kate married Oscar Chopin and moved to New Orleans Louisiana. Less than a decade later, Oscar's cotton business failed and they moved to his family's plantation in the Natchitoches Parish of northwestern Louisiana, where Oscar “opened a general store and managed a family cotton plantation” (Baym and Levine 420). When Oscar passed away in 1882, the widowed Kate was left to raise her six young children on her own. Chopin chose to contribute to the local market and “fashioned a literary career out of her experience of the Creole and Cajun cultures she had come to know” (Baym and Levine 420). Chopin’s stories of Louisiana rural life earned her national recognition as a writer of local color fiction. In Desiree’s baby, Chopin’s ability to foreshadow and build up suspense allows the reader to engage in the doubtfulness and uncertainty which keeps the reader unaware. Desiree’s Baby is a story of love, mystery, and suspense. Published in 1893, Desiree’s Baby, was centered on the controversial subject of racism. The plot is centered on Desiree who was adopted as a young toddler by Madame Valmonde and her husband, and raised on their wealthy Louisiana plantation. In subsequent years, Desiree marries Armand Aubigny, a wealthy slave owner from L’Abri. They soon have a child, however as the child ages, Armand notices that the child it not “purely white” and accuses Desiree of being part black.