A Season of Night

"This is a very flavourful memoir of the first few months after Hurricane Katrina by a local journalist who stayed straight through in a part of the city that flooded, called Mid City. He lived through those days and nights when there was no electricity and no phone service, few stores open, no traffic lights, no street lights… That part of the city, as well as other areas of course, had really been turned into a kind of spooky frontier town. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Ian’s book chronicles the resilience and resourcefulness of the people in the neighbourhood. Ultimately he tells what it was actually like to be in New Orleans at a time when very few other people were there. He talks about the local bar, Finn McCool’s, which is one of the cornerstones of the neighbourhood. It became the gathering place even though there was no power, because people needed some where to go. In it you can read how people rigged up generators, cooked food and rewired a community that had had the equivalent of a massive stroke. He is also very good at describing the lawlessness that went on. Katrina brought out the best and worst in people. Some were helping their community get back on its feet; others were looting. There was very little police presence at the time, so people were left to themselves. You got the entire range of possible responses to the breakdown of services and community."