City of Refuge (2008) by Tom Pizzota

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

City of Refuge (2008)

by Tom Pizzota

New Orleans, Louisiana

Louisiana: 26/30

  Cit of Refuge is a Hurricane Katrina novel, specifically focusing on the aftermath and how it impacts two families, one white with one of those "only in the past" situations where an entire family of four is supported by a male breadwinner who works for an alt-weekly, and the Mom's only job is to take care of the children and complain about everything.  The African American family is more interesting- a brother/sister pair with the sister's adult child.   The actual description of Katrina and its aftermath as experienced by the African American protagonist (the white couple have decamped to Oxford before relocating to Chicago), is the real-life equivalent of the opening of a work of dystopian fiction, but the aftermath is not- the worst of it being a few rough days at the Superdome or Convention Center in New Orleans followed by bus relocations to anywhere- in the case of the sister of the brother/sister duo, a Christian camp in Arkansas surrounded by cotton fields. 

  The worst of it for the white family is listening to unsympathetic voices on early oughts' talk radio.  I thought it was clear that the agenda of the writer was not to create some kind of gothic freakshow of Fema trailers and the survival of the most destitute, but rather to show a more "average" experience of having your whole life ruined overnight.  All in all, it hardly seems dystopian- after the storm itself and the aftermath, pretty much everything works like it should in this book, and by the end all the characters are resuming "normal" lives, either inside New Orleans or in their new homes.