This book offers insightful, emotional accounts of life before, during, and immediately after Hurricane Katrina in a parish that seemingly disappeared from the government's sight. While President Bush was shaking hands with FEMA director Michael Browne ("Brownie," as he will long be remembered) on the fourth day after the storm, St. Bernard Parish was struggling to salvage what they could.


As the rest of the world watched the worst of humanity emerge on television, ordinary people did extraordinary things to save the parish that found itself almost completely submerged in floodwater. Heart-wrenching stories of the human will to survive offer an inside perspective on what it means to be a survivor of Hurricane Katrina.