Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone - Hardcover

Clark, Joshua

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416537635 ISBN 13: 9781416537632

Publisher: Free Pr, 2007

Synopsis

Documents the experiences of an NPR correspondent and French Quarter resident who remained in New Orleans throughout the hurricane Katrina disaster, describing his survival story and contributions to subsequent recovery and rebuilding efforts. 30,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

"The first Katrina books were literal and drawn in American Realism tones. Now comes Josh Clark and "Heart Like Water", written in surrealistic bursts of purple and crimson and goth black, as vivid as the storm itself and as uncompromising as the survivors of New Orleans."

-- Curtis Wilkie, author of "Dixie"

"Joshua Clark has written a poignant, evocative book about the city he loves. "Heart Like Water" has the paradoxical ability to both uplift and haunt."

-- Douglas Brinkley, author of "The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast"

"In the growing constellation of Katrina stories, Josh Clark's masterful tale shines brightest. The Apocalypse destroyed a city and ripped to shreds lives, but the legibility of its profound inner impact had to wait for this book, which is a love story. Clark's book is our "Love in a Time of Cholera", but, even more than Marquez's novel, it is immediate and wrenching and true, while its rhythms, like Marquez's, are nothing short of majestic. Josh Clark has written the great nonfiction New Orleans novel, a book that's here to stay.

-- Andrei Codrescu, NPR correspondent and author of "New Orleans, Mon Amour"

"For those of us who still mourn and fear we will always mourn for our beloved New Orleans, Joshua Clark's memoir of the terrible Katrina -- for which he would not abandon the city -- is a tough and beautiful thing. He has an eye and an ear for the crucial details and he is also a really fine writer. You will mourn anew reading this book, but it will help you heal."

-- Robert Olen Butler, author of "Severance" and the Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain"

"Sprawling, rambunctious, and finally very moving, Josh Clark's "Heart Like Water" is a valuable, kaleidoscopic record of a time when reality got turned inside out in America's most soulful city."

-- Tom Piazza, author of "Why New Orleans Matters"
""Heart Like Water" gives us not only a first-person history of a horrific time, but all the chaos and absurdity of that time. Clark has produced something that is not only entertaining, but an important document explaining how people adjust and survive."

-- John Barry, author of "The Great Influenza" and "Rising Tide"
"Joshua Clark stuck it out in New Orleans during Katrina and the ensuing flood and serves up Apocalypse stew, which doesn't go down easy. "Heart Like Water" is street reporting at its rawest and most revealing. Clark tells what happened as it happened, the disgusting, painful truth without pontificating from a safe distance. He's a soul survivor if ever there was one."

-- Barry Gifford, author of "Wild at Heart" and "Night People"

"The hurricane as seen by a young man in the French Quarter who stayed through it all, describing a trajectory from horrified onlooker to rebel and outcast to angel and mystic and madman, to trauma victim and political activist. As an adopted son of Louisiana and friend to its residents, witness to suffering and the loss of all some possess -- the one thing that is not lost is his devotion to the place and admiration of their spirit and plea for their future."

-- Nancy Lemann, author of "Malaise" and "The Fiery Pantheon"

"What was it like? That's what you want to know, isn't it? What was it like when the levees collapsed and New Orleans sank into chaos? "Heart Like Water" is the vivid eyewitness account by Joshua Clark of life and love in a ruined city."

-- John Biguenet, author of "Oyster" and "The Torturer's Apprentice"

About the Author:

Joshua Clark, founder of Light of New Orleans Publishing, edited Louisiana in Words, French Quarter Fiction, and other books, and his writing and photographs appear in many newspapers and magazines. He covered New Orleans in Katrina's aftermath for Salon.com and National Public Radio.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Pr
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1416537635
• ISBN 13: 9781416537632
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 356