The good pirates of the forgotten bayous : fighting to save a way of life in the wake of Hurricane Katrina

With a long and colorful family history of defying storms, the seafaring Robin cousins of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, make a fateful decision to ride out Hurricane Katrina on their hand-built fishing boats in a sheltered Civil War–era harbor called Violet Canal. But when Violet is overrun by killer surges, the Robins must summon all their courage, seamanship, and cunning to save themselves and the scores of others suddenly cast into their care. In this gripping saga, Louisiana native Ken Wells provides a close-up look at the harrowing experiences in the backwaters of New Orleans during and after Katrina. Focusing on the plight of the intrepid Robin family, whose members trace their local roots to before the American Revolution, Wells recounts the landfall of the storm and the tumultuous seventy-two hours afterward, when the Robins' beloved bayou country lay catastrophically flooded and all but forgotten by outside authorities as the world focused its attention on New Orleans. Wells follows his characters for more than two years as they strive, amid mind-boggling wreckage and governmental fecklessness, to rebuild their shattered lives. This is a story about the deep longing for home and a proud bayou people's love of the fertile but imperiled low country that has nourished them.

The true story of a resilient circle of shrimp boat captains who faced and withstood the wreckage of Katrina but now find their courage tested by a greater threat: the disappearance of their livelihood and their centuries-old bayou culture.

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Publishers Weekly

Starred Review.

Author and journalist Wells, a native of Louisiana bayou country, was a Wall Street Journal reporter when Katrina struck in 2005. Arguably more horrific than the scene in New Orleans were the bayou parishes, particularly St. Bernard and Plaquemines, where the eye of Katrina came on land. After hitching a National Guard helicopter to St. Bernard Parish, Wells meets Ricky Robin, whose ancestors had been hunting, fishing, and pirating the bayous for over 250 years. Robin became Wells's guide, relating harrowing stories of the storm, as even the parish president and his staff were trapped, their emergency vehicles flooded or washed away entirely; the first outside help to reach them was not FEMA, but a squad of Canadian Mounted Police. Wells also examines the disaster's "unnatural causes," like the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a shipping canal dredged from Lake Pontchartrain to the Gulf of Mexico, which provided an inland channel for the Category 5 storm surge driven by Katrina. Afterwards, the failed levee system prevented filthy, polluted water from draining back to the ocean, turning much of the bayou into a cesspool. Vivid prose, first-hand testimony and solid, heartbreaking reportage make this disaster debrief hard to put down, and worth the attention of every U.S. citizen.
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Contents......Page 8 Map of the St. Bernard Parish region......Page 10 Prologue......Page 12 THE STORM......Page 20 A Monster Cometh......Page 22 1. Ricky at the Helm......Page 24 2. Ronald on the Invincible Vance......Page 30 3. Susan Robin Goes for a Drive......Page 37 4. Stormy Traditions......Page 44 5. Cajun-Spanish Roots and Pirate Connections......Page 48 6. Charlo’s Dawn......Page 60 7. Matine’s Dilemma......Page 67 8. Ricky’s Ark......Page 80 9. Charlo Adrift......Page 94 10. The Human Tide......Page 98 11. Charlo in Limbo......Page 108 12. Herbie and Mike’s Strange Adventure......Page 112 13. The Long March......Page 119 14. Cruel Tuesday......Page 124 15. A Day of Reckoning......Page 137 AFTERMATH......Page 144 16. Nine Days Beyond the Flood......Page 146 17. The Imperfect Storm: Anatomy of a Not Altogether Natural Disaster......Page 157 18. Pioneers in the Rubble......Page 173 19. Dancing with Boats......Page 190 20. A Short Journey of Hope......Page 204 21. Hard Realities of the ‘‘Federal Storm’’......Page 210 22. The Toll upon the Land: The MR-GO Must Go......Page 219 Epilogue: South Toward Home......Page 228 Notes on Sources......Page 246 Acknowledgments......Page 254 About the Author......Page 256 Offers a close-up look at the harrowing experiences in the backwaters of New Orleans during and after Katrina. Focusing on the plight of the intrepid Robin family, the author follows his characters as they strive, amid unbelievable wreckage and governmental fecklessness, to rebuild their shattered lives. Details the experiences of the Robin family of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, who chose not to evacuate for Hurricane Katrina, and discusses how they survived the dangerous swells in their fishing boat docked in Violet Canal