20 greatest works of fiction about New Orleans

City of Refuge (Cover image via Harper Perennial)

19. City of Refuge

After 2005, it became practically impossible to write about New Orleans without at least referencing Hurricane Katrina. The devastating Category 5 storm caused intense damage all along the Gulf Coast, from Florida to Texas. However, New Orleans was especially hard-hit because its infrastructure failed catastrophically. The levees that held back much of the water surrounding the city broke, leading to dramatic flooding.

About 80 percent of the city was flooded, with poorer neighborhoods and New Orleanians especially affected. Many residents were killed, with many more forced out of their homes and neighborhoods.

Such a major event looms large in a city’s history and its fiction. That is certainly the case in City of Refuge, the 2009 novel by Tom Piazza. The book follows two families — one black, the other white — as they face Hurricane Katrina. Their various family dynamics and individual members are depicted in the lead up to the storm, the events of the hurricane itself, and the lingering aftermath.

The white Donaldsons are transplants to New Orleans from the Midwest. Husband Craig loves their new hometown, but wife Alice is so unsettled by the change that their marriage is in danger. They eventually escape the storm and move back to Chicago.

However, the black Williams family, who have lived in New Orleans for generations, decides to stay put through the storm. Because they live in the Lower Ninth Ward, an economically depressed neighborhood that was ravaged by the hurricane, their experiences are ultimately far more harrowing than those of the Donaldsons’.

Piazza does not make easy conclusions about race or economics. Though it’s clear that the Williams and the Donaldsons live in distinct worlds, they are both portrayed with a sensitivity that is both satisfying and harrowing.