The Book
Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the levees failed, and soon an epic American city was emptied of practically all its people.
Almost immediately, however, die-hard New Orleanians began a homeward journey. They found once vibrant neighborhoods reduced to shattered, blacked-out shells, but some made a stand and planted the seeds of rebirth amid the wreckage.
In A Season of Night: New Orleans Life after Katrina, author and New Orleans journalist Ian McNulty offers an intimate account of that homecoming and the battle between hope and despair in a surreal landscape.
McNulty moved back to his wrecked New Orleans house soon after the floodwaters drained, living on the second floor and writing this book on a laptop by candlelight.
By turns haunting, inspiring, and darkly comic, this memoir offers a behind-the-headlines story of resilience and renewal for a neighborhood and a city. From bittersweet camaraderie in the ruined streets to the first flickers of cultural revival and the explosive joy of a post-Katrina Mardi Gras, A Season of Night delivers an unprecedented tale from the wounded but always enthralling Crescent City.
A Season of Night is scheduled to be published in July 2008 by the University Press of Mississippi. Please see the Excerpts section of this site to read samples from the book.
