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

Joshua Clark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2007

Try it. Right now. Picture the lights going off in the room you're sitting in. The computer, the air conditioning, phones, everything. Then the people, every last person in your building, on the street outside, the entire neighborhood, vanished. With them go all noises: chitchat, coughs, cars, and that wordless, almost impalpable hum of a city. And animals: no dogs, no birds, not even a cricket's legs rubbing together, not even a smell. Now bump it up to 95 degrees. Turn your radio on and listen to 80 percent of your city drowning. You're almost there. Only twenty-eight days to go.

Joshua Clark never left New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, choosing instead to band together with fellow holdouts in the French Quarter, pooling resources and volunteering energy in an effort to save the city they loved. When Katrina hit, Clark, a key correspondent for National Public Radio during the storm, immediately began to record hundreds of hours of conversations with its victims, not only in the city but throughout the Gulf: the devastated poor and rich alike; rescue workers from around the country; reporters; local characters who could exist nowhere else but New Orleans; politicians; the woman Clark loved, in a relationship ravaged by the storm. Their voices resound throughout this memoir of a unique and little-known moment of anarchy and chaos, of heartbreaking kindness and incomprehensible anguish, of mercy and madness as only America could deliver it.

Paying homage to the emotional power of Joan Didion, the journalistic authority of Norman Mailer, and the gonzo irreverence of Tom Wolfe, Joshua Clark takes us through the experiences of loss and renewal, resilience and hope, in a city unlike any other. With lyrical sympathy, humility, and humor, Heart Like Water marks an astonishing and important national debut.

A portion of the author's royalties from this book will go to the Katrina Arts Relief and Emergency Support (KARES) fund, which supports New Orleans-area writers affected by the storm.Visit www.NewOrleansLiteraryInstitute.com to find out how to make a direct and positive impact on the region.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. As Hurricane Katrina bears down on New Orleans, Clark (founder of Light of New Orleans Publishing) refuses to leave his French Quarter apartment, convinced that he'll be safe four stories up. In the days that follow, he and other friends who stayed behind make the best of the situation, appropriating huge quantities of liquor during a supermarket looting, and organizing themselves as a makeshift cleanup crew to avoid being forcibly evacuated. Such lighthearted moments become increasingly rare as tension develops between Clark's optimistic outlook and his girlfriend's depressed reaction. We each think the other's pathetic, he confesses to a friend, and there's New Orleans busted in the abyss between us. The drawn-out disintegration of their relationship runs through the second half of the memoir, while Clark tape-records impressionistic interviews with fellow storm survivors. The scenes of physical devastation are matched by an uncompromising look at the emotional traumas that unfold in the storm's aftermath—yet through it all, Clark never fully abandons his sense of the absurd. In a short postscript, he turns serious to call attention to the fastest disappearing landmass on the planet, the coastal wetlands that separate New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico, urging readers to agitate for a solution. (July 10)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Clark was among the few hearty or hapless souls who remained in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He and his girlfriend banded with a group of friends equally determined to stay, cycling between their apartments and an abandoned condo complex with a pool used for bathing and keeping drinks cool. They kept an eye out for other survivors, local bars still open, looters, and drifting dead bodies while they dodged the police and the National Guard as the city was evacuated. In this riveting first-person account, Clark recalls the static in the air as the hurricane approached; the unnerving silence afterwards without even the sound of birds; and "shopping" for supplies at a local store where the owner had apparently given permission before fleeing. Between forays to find food and water, and "something to make us smile," Clark corresponded for NPR and wrote a Katrina diary for Slate. He also recalls the finger-pointing among politicians, both local and national. This is a raw, revealing, and highly personal look at surviving Hurricane Katrina. Bush, Vanessa

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Edition first Printing edition (July 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416537635
• ISBN-13: 978-1416537632
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #946,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beg to Differ, August 30, 2007

By 

Ignatius "Ignatius_J_Riley" (New Orleans) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone (Hardcover)

I read all the glowing reviews and some of my friends are featured copiously throughout this volume--people who are actually unbelievably gracious and compassionate--but I just couldn't get past Joshua Clark's drunken frat boy sensibilities--something about Clark struck me in the back of the head like a silver spoon from a spoiled, New England prep-school, rich kid's soft, workless hands. I lived through it too and it wasn't a party like Mr. Clark paints it...not one bit. I could only read half of it; as lively as his memoir could get there was something incredibly immature and insensitive about Mr. Clark's actions in his account...maybe the latter half of the book redeems itself and if so, I will review in kind. Although it can be engaging in a kind-of voyeuristic sense, I can only give it two stars because the five star praise by the other posters was far too generous.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clark poured out his heart, like water., August 23, 2007

By 

Jeff Dwyer "writer" (Fairfield, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone (Hardcover)

Joshua Clark's HEART LIKE WATER is powerful, poignant, touching and amazing unlike any other book I've read about surviving a disaster. Street-wise Clark takes readers through the French Quarter's back alleys, to indestructable bars that stayed open during the hurricane, and out-lying areas not mentioned in news accounts. With a beautiful, gritty writing style, he gives us the perspectives of people who could be easily over-looked but whose experiences take us as close to the eye of the hurricane, and its terrible aftermath, that out-siders can get. This book will prove to be the quintessential Katrina chronicle for years to come. Ghost Hunter's Guide to New Orleans

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The BEST Book Written About Hurricane Katrina!, July 12, 2007

By 

Dylan Kealey "Katrina Survivor" (Louisiana / Mississippi / and Now Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone (Hardcover)

Wow. Despite the tragedy that frames this book, it's one of the most wild, roller-coaster, entertaining reads I've ever had. It's the story of families forged in crisis, how people banded together and survived amongst the hurricane's aftermath in the French Quarter. One of the most memorable characters here is Ride who was the neighborhood's makeshift medic before the Red Cross or any EMS could get in. He sewed a guy's ear back on, healed wounded animals, treated gangrene on a woman who swam out of the floodwaters straight to Johnny White's bar which refused to close for one second. In the second half of the book, as electricity finally returns to their neighborhood, Clark and Ride travel to all the other regions, documenting the human details left after the wind and water, the sediment and sentiment there, in a way far deeper than any news broadcast could ever do. Some of the questions Clark faces: Where does your heart go when you must choose between the first place that ever loved you, and a person you love more than you ever thought was possible? And how do you, against all odds, make it through the hard time with a tear in your eye and a smile on your lips?
This is a must read for every American.