City of Refuge

It's been a week since I finished 'City of Refuge' and I am still thinking about the characters and their experiences. For me, this is the mark of a truly memorable reading experience - rare in this day of disposable fiction. Like most of those posting here, I did not experience Hurricane Katrina firsthand. I watched the coverage on CNN, horrified by the scenes of devastation and human suffering that unfolded before my eyes. I tried to imagine what it had to be like for those who found themselves trapped in their attics or on their roofs. I cried for those lost. And I raged against an administration that would treat this catastrophe with such disregard. This is America, I thought as I watched displaced residents begging for food and help from anyone who could give it to them. Why is my government not there to help them, I cried? 'City of Refuge' brought it all back and more. Not only is the story of actual flood survivors brilliantly depicted, the author has also given us a glimpse into the lives of those displaced by the storm - lucky enough not to lose everything, but still placed in a difficult situation. The juxtaposition of the two stories emphasizes how different life can be for the "haves" and the "have nots." I really enjoyed the author's detailed descriptions of New Orleans - before and after. However, words really cannot convey the scope of the devastation, and I found myself researching locations noted in the book to see exactly how they were impacted by the storm. What I found gave further meaning to the book. Check out Google maps and search for any one of the streets in the character SJ's neighborhood (Tennessee St. is a good place to start). Google maps satellite view shows the area after the storm, before any demolition occurred. What you find will shock you. Street after street with houses shattered and tossed about like trash. Then, look at the street views of the same locations. There is nothing left, just vacant lots where once there was a thriving community. To me, the mark of an outstanding work of fiction is that it makes me think, feel, and want to know more. 'City of Refuge' is all that and more. Kudos to Tom Piazza for bringing us into the "eye of the storm." We cannot forget what happened three years ago and must pledge that nothing like this ever happens in our country again.

A chance meeting on a festive afternoon between two families, one black and one white, kicks off this tale. It's a simple, yet wonderfully effective look at what makes New Orleans great and what was lost in the flood. There are surely as many different stories of what Katrina meant (and still means) as there were victims of the storm, but the two families and their friends as created by Piazza make for a memorable allegory for the sad reality the world watched unfold a few years ago. While it was just a few years ago, I had forgotten just how angry the government's fumbling response to the disaster made me. So it's much to Piazza's credit that he wrote the book, because it all deserves to be remembered. The story and its main characters are fictional, but the sights, smells and sounds of New Orleans are delightfully real before the flood and horrifyingly so afterward. Like one of the many delta blues and R & B musicians he name-checks throughout the book, Piazza names names of those responsible - Bush, Chertoff, "Heckuva Job Brownie" - and doesn't mince words regarding what they did and didn't do. (He does invent a fictional talk-radio host as a stand-in for the real ones who offended nearly everyone with their views on the victims - fair enough.) Against that backdrop, the terrifying experiences of the refugees that we all saw unfolding on television are humanized vividly through the two families. From the calm before the storm to the very point of no return, in New Orleans and on the road and from a safe distance, through the eyes of the victims and those near and far who helped them, and back to the shattered streets afterward, it's all expertly depicted and unflinching. It's not always easy to read, and it shouldn't be, in light of what really happened. But it's definitely a story we should all remember.

Where were you when the levees broke? For those of us not in the eye of the storm, that reference to newscasts from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina stays with us like 9/11 or, for an earlier generation, the Kennedy assassination. Reading City of Refuge, about the events and aftermath of Katrina, just a few weeks shy of the third anniversary, I clearly recalled newsmen hanging onto columns with coifs gone astray, the relief that maybe it wouldn't be as bad as expected, then the images of Americans stranded on rooftops with no food or water, begging for help, and the bodies floating. By focusing on two families, Craig and Alice Donaldson, an upper middle-class white family, and the extended African-American family from the Lower Ninth, SJ, his sister Lucy, and her son Wesley, Tom Piazza personalizes the catastrophe in a way newscasts and documentaries could not, at least for me. In heavier hands, the white folks who got out and the black folks who didn't could have come off as cliche, if not somewhat opportunistic. But Piazza applies a light touch that contrasts perfectly to the weight of the subject. A black man enters into conversation with Craig Donaldson in the hotel where they both landed after hours in traffic, camping on lounge chairs if they were lucky, any space available if they weren't. We see white families at the Superdome. Pointing out that the difference was more rich vs poor than black vs white, or native New Orleanians vs transplants with someplace else to go, and sometimes simply folks who rode out other storms and figured on doing it again vs the more cautious. I also understood for the first time why people wouldn't leave: It's inconvenient and expensive, you can't leave your job, you have nowhere else to go, and most of the threats never materialize anyway. Never having visited NOLA or The Big Easy, two names by which the city is known, may actually make me a good choice to review the book because I came with no preconceived notions of the city's unique culture. Tom Piazza had to create it for me, and he did an excellent job. He also steps back from time to time to show the huge dimensions of the loss and the government failures that allowed it to happen. Again, in the hands of a different writer, this might interrupt the flow, and again, Piazza handles it with a perfect touch. I will say that I found the details of the Donaldson's marital issues that raged mostly around their differing feelings for the city, the least interesting part of the story. At first I attributed it to "author creep"--the way many literary authors today write about loosely disguised versions of their own lives--but soon saw the value of it in the context. As compared to the problems of SJ's family that included poverty, ill health, drug addiction, kids constantly in danger of taking a wrong turn, the Donaldson's problems seemed light. But having nothing else to compare them to, they exaggerated small things out of all proportion. The best part

City of Refuge is a story of two families as they seek refuge from Hurricane Katrina. The main characters are SJ a black Vietnam Veteran, widower and carpenter living in the lower 9th Ward and Craig Donaldson a white jazz writer, editor and transplant to New Orleans. City of Refuge describes the contrasting experiences of the families of the protagonists as their lives are irreversibly disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. The experiences of SJ's family are the more gripping and better realized. Inherently this is because SJ's whole family's history and being is interwoven with his family's life in the lower lower 9th , where: "You had a place, a role to fill, a sense of being part of something bigger than yourself, a community." Both emotionally and physically they have much more to lose. In contrast the Donaldson are of the class and mindset where: "The badge of honor is being able to ride above the discomfort, arranging things so that you and your family are not sweating it out in the grease pit with everyone else." Inherently you feel the smallness of the Donaldson's problems compared to SJs making his families troubles all the more poignant. Overall this is a thoughtful examination of class, race, family and community in New Orleans through the lens of the Katrina experience. About the Author: Award winning author Tom Piazza is himself a New Orleans resident and jazz writer; he was displaced by Katrina, eventually returning to the city and writing the non fiction work Why New Orleans Matters which discusses the cultural importance of restoring New Orleans. This book effectively makes the same argument in fictional though semi-autobiographic form. His previous fiction works are the novel My Cold War and the short-story collection Blues and Trouble which won the James Michener Award for Fiction. Piazza has also written two listeners guides to jazz music and a compilation of jazz album liner notes. In addition Piazza is a regular writer of liner notes for jazz and rock CDs.

"It was the morning after Mardi Gras. Ten hours earlier, at midnight, the trucks had come out to clean the streets of the French Quarter, and police cars cruised the streets slowly, announcing that Mardi Gras was officially over. But no announcements had been necessary in the Lower Ninth Ward". With "City of Refuge" Tom Piazza hits his stride as a novelist. Five years ago I read his first novel "My Cold War" at the suggestion of a friend. I remember being very drawn into the family relationships and sense of place and time Piazza created, while thinking the book as a whole left something to be desired. City of Refuge does not leave the reader wanting. It is the story of two families living in New Orleans in the days leading up to and following the Katrina disaster. One family is black and one is white. The different way each family prepares for, experiences and recovers from the hurricane serves as the matte painting Piazza uses as the backdrop for this powerful story of race, family and community. Using the places and events we all remember like the early exodus of those who could leave then the breaking of the levy and the smelly foul hell of the Convention Center and the Superdome, Piazza points out how thin the veneer of civilization is and how shallow lay the fears and resentments we all like to believe are shadows of the past. The plight of the families as refugees and their emotional connection to the ruined city and each other plays as real as if it were happening to you. We all know the public Katrina, this is the personal Katrina and Piazza tells the story with intensity, charm and intelligence. I highly recommend this title, and look forward to the author's next work.