I've rarely read as gripping, horrifying, and inspiring a book as Ken Wells' story of what happened when The Storm hit the low-lying bayou parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines. As a reporter for the "Wall Street Journal," Wells, himself a Louisiana native, saw the devastation in the two parishes immediately after Katrina. His The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous is an oral history of sorts of what happened to them, a story that got "forgotten" by a nation focused on New Orleans proper, and how the folks in the parish have fared since.
St Bernard and Plaquemines are shrimping parishes, and Wells' story focuses on the Robin clan, a shrimping family that's lived and worked in the area for over 200 years. Ricky Robin, captain of a 70 ton trawler called the "Lil Rick"--a ship built by hand--sails up the Violet Canal hoping to weather out the hurricane. But surges whipped up by the 140+ mph winds get him in trouble almost at once. In one of the book's most harrowing passages, Ricky remembers seeing a 20 foot skiff blowing through the air and then skidding across the roiling waves like a thrown stone.
In the three days following the worst of the storm, Ricky gives shelter on the "Lil Rick" to hundreds of homeless survivors, sometimes hammering out dixieland tunes on his trumpet to keep up their spirits. Disasters can bring out the worst in frightened and desperate people. But it brought out the very best in Ricky Robin.
Although Robin is the star of the book, Wells also introduces us to others who weathered the story-- such as Ricky's cousin Ronald Robin. Ronald, a veteran hurricane survivor, also tried to weather the storm in Violet Canal. But like so many others, he was stunned by Katrina's ferocity and swiftness. "Damn," he remembers exclaiming, "that SOB is coming up fast!"
Wells stayed in touch with the St. Bernard and Plaquemines survivors, and the second half of the book tells the story of how they've coped since the disaster. It's not been easy. The parishes are still pretty much devastated, and inhabitants are bitter--they call Katrina the "federal storm," convinced that the government could've prevented the greater part of the destruction had the levees been more carefully maintained. Ricky, for all his outward easy-going nature, suffers from flashbacks.
But at the end of the day, the story that Wells tells is one of astounding courage, human fellowship, and old-fashioned pluck. As Wells himself asserts, the story of the "good pirates" is "a narrative of the human spirit, a story about a decidedly blue-collar, ruggedly independent people whose decisions to face down Katrina lay in deep cultural anchors. It is a story of a people who--when they realize no one is coming to save them--rise up to save themselves and their neighbors in the face of raw peril and a disaster of unimaginable proportions."
Oh yeah: Wells is one heckuva writer too. Readers will be captivated by his style. Six stars.
