City of Refuge - Hardcover

"While the characters.are fictional and the events are real, Piazza makes it feel like it is the other way around. His heroes brim with life, while the city's destruction feels otherworldly. .a tribute to what was, and how to go on from here." -- New York Post

The big Katrina novel here at last, reconstructing a city s stubborn spirit through a writer s keen vision into singular human hearts. . . . Piazza strikes a blow for the recovery with this fine book, a perfect storm of love and anger. --New Orleans Times-Picayune

While the characters are fictional and the events are real, Piazza makes it feel like it is the other way around. His heroes brim with life, while the city s destruction feels otherworldly. a tribute to what was, and how to go on from here. --New York Post

Explaining this city s inexorable, gravitational pull to outsiders who see only corruption, crime, poverty, and malarial weather is a tough order, but every page of Piazza s deeply felt story explains a larger truth about why people live where they do: because it s home, and heart. --Washington Post

Likely to become a classic of the future. . . . Its narrative voice is on a par with Steinbeck s Grapes of Wrath. . . . An important book [that] anyone who cares about New Orleans should read. --Gather.com

Though [its] stories are fictional, they may bring home the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in a way all those news reports could not. --Atlanta Journal-Constitution

We ve seen the broad outlines of this story on TV. But through Piazza s pen, we feel maybe fully for the first time the surprise and horror as floodwaters sweep through neighborhoods, inching toward attics. --Houston Chronicle

In unforgettable scenes of biblical consequence, Piazza dramatizes more devastatingly than any journalistic account the hurricane s shocking aftermath, aligning the failure to protect, rescue, and respect the people of the Lower Ninth with the sweeping brutality of war. . . . A story as old and heartbreaking as humankind itself. --Booklist (starred review)

Richly detailed, delicately woven and compulsively readable. an effective plea to appreciate and preserve a city and its way of life. these neglected individuals and families will both inspire empathy and prevent tragedy in the future. Let s hope that this is possible outside the realm of fiction. --Jackson Free Press

This emotional novel reads like a memoir, teeming with fear, anger, pathos, hope, determination, and love. It is absolutely essential reading for every American who watched and prayed through those terrible days. --Library Journal (starred review)

Uprooted from their New Orleans homes by Hurricane Katrina, the Donaldson and Williams families--one black, the other white--make their way to Houston and share disparate experiences trying to rebuild their lives. By the author of Why New Orleans Matters. 50,000 first printing.