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

How a plucky coterie of Louisiana shrimp-boat captains faced down the most destructive hurricane in U.S. history--only to realize that the struggle to preserve their centuries-old culture had just begun

With a long and colorful family history of defying storms, the seafaring Robin cousins of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, make a fateful decision to ride out Hurricane Katrina on their hand-built fishing boats in a sheltered Civil War-era harbor called Violet Canal. But when Violet is overrun by killer surges, the Robins must summon all their courage, seamanship, and cunning to save themselves and the scores of others suddenly cast into their care.
In this gripping saga, Louisiana native Ken Wells provides a close-up look at the harrowing experiences in the backwaters of New Orleans during and after Katrina. Focusing on the plight of the intrepid Robin family, whose members trace their local roots to before the American Revolution, Wells recounts the landfall of the storm and the tumultuous seventy-two hours afterward, when the Robins' beloved bayou country lay catastrophically flooded and all but forgotten by outside authorities as the world focused its attention on New Orleans. Wells follows his characters for more than two years as they strive, amid mind-boggling wreckage and governmental fecklessness, to rebuild their shattered lives. This is a story about the deep longing for home and a proud bayou people's love of the fertile but imperiled low country that has nourished them.

About the author

Called "the Cajun Carl Hiaasen" by Tom Wolfe, Ken Wells is an editor-at-large for Bloomberg News in New York and a contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Product details

• Authors: Ken Wells, Wells Ken
• Publisher: Yale University Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.08.2015
• EAN: 9780300217384
• ISBN: 978-0-300-21738-4
• No. of pages: 288
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > Ecology; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; HISTORY / United States / 21st Century, NATURE / Natural Disasters, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, SCIENCE / Earth Sciences / Meteorology & Climatology, 21st century history: from c 2000 -, 21st century, c 2000 to c 2100, c 2000 to c 2010, c 2000 to c 2009, Social and cultural history, History of the Americas, Meteorology and climatology, True stories of heroism, endurance and survival, Natural disasters, Central Southern States, US South