hurricane katrina

Sheri Fink is an incredible investigator and writer. In Five Days at Memorial she takes an in-depth look at what happened at the Baptist Memorial Hospital in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The first section of the book covers what happened before, during and immediately following the hurricane. Before the hurricane, it was recommended that residents evacuate the city and surrounding parishes and those evacuations were underway or had already been completed. Some residents decided to stay and ride out the storm, as they may have always done in the past, and several care facilities were

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital is a much longer and expanded version of the Pulitzer Prize winning article Sheri Fink wrote about the suspicious deaths in a New Orleans hospital following hurricane Katrina. The author has collected the accounts of surviving doctors, patients, and rescuers, as they tried to save patients when the hospital was flooded, then lost power, and finally lost almost all access to communication to the outside world.  The book can be divided into two sections: the first, stronger half is about the storm and immediate aftermath.  The

Zeitoun is a nonfiction book taking us to the action and tragedy packed drama following the days and weeks after the New Orleans flood of 2004. It is the story of Mr. Zeitoun, a man of middle eastern decent who decided not to evacuate with Hurricane Katrina approaching the city and stayed behind to protect his property and in a gentlemanly way to help his neighbors and fellow New Orleanians.  He feeds hungry animals he finds in abandon houses and watches his and his neighbors property. When the looting starts, he is picked as an early target because of his middle eastern origin.  However, he

The Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes is a J Fiction story about twelve year old Lanesha who lives in New Orleans' Ninth Ward with Mama Ya-Ya. Eighty-two year old Mama Ya-Ya isn't a blood relative but she might as well be. She delivered Lanesha and has cared for her all of Lanesha's life. Lanesha's 17 year old Momma died giving birth to her.

Lanesha was born with a caul, a thin, filmy membrane covering her newborn head, and Mama Ya-Ya says Lanesha's kin are scared of her because she has "the sight". Lanesha sees ghosts, has "since she was an itty-bitty baby. Ghosts. Here, now. Always. They