Overview

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.

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9780300121520

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Reviews

"""Gripping. . . . This is not another sad Katrina book. It's a book that dispassionately looks at what happened and why and relies on facts for impact. Everyone should read it.""—Greg Langley, The Advocate (Baton Rouge) -- Greg Langley * The Advocate (Baton Rouge) * ""[This] off-the-beaten path Katrina story is one of the best. . . . In the glut of works about the devastation Katrina caused . . . Wells has found a fresh, compelling story. As a bonus, he is a superb reporter and accomplished stylist. Of the dozen Katrina books I have read so far, I am guessing The Good Pirates will stay with me the most vividly. . . . The individual survival stories make for adventure storytelling of the first order.""—Steve Weinberg, Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- Steve Weinberg * Atlanta Journal-Constitution * Winner of the 2008 Harry Chapin Media Award in the Books category, presented by WHY (World Hunger Year). -- Harry Chapin Media Award * WHY * “Ken Wells is first and foremost a great reporter. Nothing escapes him, and yet every detail he includes counts. This book is literary journalism at its best.”—Don Ranly, University of Missouri School of Journalism -- Don Ranly"

Vivid re-creation of Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact on an unusual fishing community outside New Orleans.A Louisiana native, Conde Nast Portfolio senior editor Wells (Crawfish Mountain, 2007, etc.) spent several months interviewing shrimp- and oyster-boat captains and other hurricane survivors in St. Bernard Parish (pop. 67,000), a former pirate haven whose gumbo of cultures has given rise to a distinctive way of life. Unlike their sophisticated big-city neighbors, these Louisiana bayou residents have for generations led lives centered on sin, cooking, drinking, eating, fighting, fishing, sex, and love, he writes; they build boats in the backyards of their shotgun shacks and mobile homes, and hang out in saloons like the Bucket of Blood. For many, riding out hurricanes was a family tradition, but nothing prepared them for Katrina, which in 2005 leveled most of the parish and claimed 132 lives, 35 of them at a nursing home that failed to evacuate. Fifty-one-year-old shrimper Ricky Robin, grand-nephew of a swashbuckling New Orleans swordsman, and others in the Robin family stand center stage in this well-written survival saga. Wells begins with the struggle to secure fishing trawlers in the Violet Canal during the storm's early surges; recounts the perilous experiences of people stranded in trees, lofts and cars amid rising waters; and describes many heroic rescues made by boat captains in the four days before military help arrived. He nicely captures the flavor and color of the moment, from Ricky playing When the Saints Go Marching In on his trumpet on the deck of his vessel to calm 45 rescued people, to two weary, storm-tossed survivors, meeting for the first time after separate exhausting ordeals, laughingly swapping survival stories. The author unabashedly celebrates the courage and pride of people in this forgotten backwater when faced with the hurricane's onslaught. By 2007, the parish had regained about half of its pre-Katrina population, with most residents living in trailers and modular housing.A heartfelt tribute to badly battered folks whose gritty blue-collar pluck, declares Wells, may yet save their bayou way of life. (Kirkus Reviews)

Ken Wells is first and foremost a great reporter. Nothing escapes him, and yet every detail he includes counts. This book is literary journalism at its best. --Don Ranly, University of Missouri School of Journalism--Don Ranly

Ken Wells is first and foremost a great reporter. Nothing escapes him, and yet every detail he includes counts. This book is literary journalism at its best.Don Ranly, University of Missouri School of Journalism -- Don Ranly

Author Information

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.

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