Rising from Katrina: How My Mississippi Hometown Lost It All and Found What Mattered Review

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(More customer reviews)Rising from Katrina is a beautiful tribute to the very wonderful people of Mississippi and the horrendous ordeal they have been dealt. It is a story of hope and love, and a story of strength and faith. It is very well done and beautifully written. If you care about what has happened along the Gulf Coast and fear forgetting, buy this book. Kathleen Koch is a superb writer and she brings us into the world of the characters who are Mississippi, and I mean that in a very positive way. Thank you Ms Koch for giving your time and energy to help your hometown and for sharing this incredibly personal and powerful book with us.
A fan of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and all of her residents,
Kate

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Hurricane Katrina left Eddie Favre, the affable mayor of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, with nothing but the shirt and shorts he was wearing. State and local officials offered to send him pants, but Favre declined. ''Wearing long pants sends a signal that everything is okay,'' he insisted. ''And until such time as everything is okay here, I'll wear my shorts.''Even George W. Bush took notice. ''I arrive here at this important school and he's got short pants on,'' the president remarked during a visit nearly five months after the storm. ''Eddie, I like a man who sticks to his guns.''Those who read this moving story of the small town of Bay St. Louis and the Mississippi Gulf Coast will discover an entire region that did just that.The 2005 hurricane season was the most devastating in history. People from the Bahamas to Mexico to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida suffered a record 15 hurricanes, four of which reached Category 5 strength.Katrina was the costliest. Images from the Superdome and the rooftops of New Orleans are seared into the American consciousness.But few realize the Mississippi Gulf Coast was where Katrina hit full force and where the destruction was worst. Entire towns were reduced to shoulder-high rubble by the winds and the unprecedented 30-foot storm surge.Bay St. Louis was the former home of CNN correspondent Kathleen Koch. From her initial Katrina assignment in Alabama, Koch headed west in the storm's aftermath. The closer she got to her community, the more personal the story became. Old friends asked her to search for loved ones whose bodies would soon be found. She reported from the sites of once-beautiful homes--including her own--stripped to their concrete pads. Time and again, she heard residents pleas to spread the word about the dire needs on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.Rising from Katrina is a story of the kindness of strangers, of minor miracles--and, above all, of how despite bureaucratic snarls and insurance battles a region rolled up its sleeves and rebuilt. It is also the story of a veteran reporter who, struggling to maintain her objectivity amid loss, traveled her own personal path from devastation to recovery.

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The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous: Fighting to Save a Way of Life in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina Review

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(More customer reviews)I've rarely read as gripping, horrifying, and inspiring a book as Ken Wells' story of what happened when The Storm hit the low-lying bayou parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines. As a reporter for the "Wall Street Journal," Wells, himself a Louisiana native, saw the devastation in the two parishes immediately after Katrina. His The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous is an oral history of sorts of what happened to them, a story that got "forgotten" by a nation focused on New Orleans proper, and how the folks in the parish have fared since.
St Bernard and Plaquemines are shrimping parishes, and Wells' story focuses on the Robin clan, a shrimping family that's lived and worked in the area for over 200 years. Ricky Robin, captain of a 70 ton trawler called the "Lil Rick"--a ship built by hand--sails up the Violet Canal hoping to weather out the hurricane. But surges whipped up by the 140+ mph winds get him in trouble almost at once. In one of the book's most harrowing passages, Ricky remembers seeing a 20 foot skiff blowing through the air and then skidding across the roiling waves like a thrown stone.
In the three days following the worst of the storm, Ricky gives shelter on the "Lil Rick" to hundreds of homeless survivors, sometimes hammering out dixieland tunes on his trumpet to keep up their spirits. Disasters can bring out the worst in frightened and desperate people. But it brought out the very best in Ricky Robin.
Although Robin is the star of the book, Wells also introduces us to others who weathered the story-- such as Ricky's cousin Ronald Robin. Ronald, a veteran hurricane survivor, also tried to weather the storm in Violet Canal. But like so many others, he was stunned by Katrina's ferocity and swiftness. "Damn," he remembers exclaiming, "that SOB is coming up fast!"
Wells stayed in touch with the St. Bernard and Plaquemines survivors, and the second half of the book tells the story of how they've coped since the disaster. It's not been easy. The parishes are still pretty much devastated, and inhabitants are bitter--they call Katrina the "federal storm," convinced that the government could've prevented the greater part of the destruction had the levees been more carefully maintained. Ricky, for all his outward easy-going nature, suffers from flashbacks.
But at the end of the day, the story that Wells tells is one of astounding courage, human fellowship, and old-fashioned pluck. As Wells himself asserts, the story of the "good pirates" is "a narrative of the human spirit, a story about a decidedly blue-collar, ruggedly independent people whose decisions to face down Katrina lay in deep cultural anchors. It is a story of a people who--when they realize no one is coming to save them--rise up to save themselves and their neighbors in the face of raw peril and a disaster of unimaginable proportions."
Oh yeah: Wells is one heckuva writer too. Readers will be captivated by his style. Six stars.


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Torn Apart (Storm Front) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book was much better than the first in the trilogy. So much so that it almost seems like 2 different authors. Sharon Sala does seem to be either a big hit or a big miss for me. The suspense was high throughout the book. It is not often that I wish over and over again that a character would just die. But in this one I did.
Small SPOILER below:
At first I was not sure that I would be able to read a book about a young boy being kidnapped by a pedophile since I have 2 young boys myself. For those who might feel as I do, the boy is never actually molested. That made it bearable for me. The boy is well written and I think responds appropriately for a child his age, not seeming older than he was, which is a problem in many books.
The love story was not really a main element in the book. The hero and heroine were separated at the time of the kidnapping but they still loved each other. As soon as the hero gets back to the heroine all their romantic type problems are over. So if you're looking for a traditional romance here, you're not really going to get it. It is sweet when they get back together and become stronger than each is alone, but the thrust of the story is finding and saving Bobby.
The author winds the story through the POVs of several characters showing the trail that eventually leads to Bobby's rescue. It is very well done and never intrusive or abrupt when the POV changes.
I'm glad I stuck with the series after the much weaker first volume.

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