Thursday, July 22, 2010

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

By Josh Neufeld
Grades 10+

This is a stunning graphic novel that tells the tale of Hurricane Katrina in the true stories of six survivors. It is overwhelming to think of your home town destroyed and you having to bear witness to the horrors. This book describes that horror.

A.D. follows each of the six from the hours before Katrina struck to its horrific aftermath. Here is Denise, a sixth-generation New Orleanian who will experience the chaos of the Superdome; the Doctor, whose unscathed French Quarter home becomes a refuge for those not so lucky; Abbas and his friend Mansell, who face the storm from the roof of Abbas’s family-run market; Kwame, a pastor’s son whose young life will remain wildly unsettled well into the future; and Leo, a comic-book fan, and his girlfriend, Michelle, who will lose everything but each other. We watch as they make the wrenching decision between staying and evacuating. And we see them coping not only with the outcome of their own decisions but also with those made by politicians, police, and others like themselves--decisions that drastically affect their lives, but over which they have no control.

Overwhelming demand has propelled A.D. from its widely-read early Internet installments to this complete hardcover edition; it shines an uncanny light on the devastating truths and human triumphs of New Orleans after the deluge.

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