The New Orleans Legacy

Rodman Philbrick

Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick takes readers with narrator Zane Dupree on a visit to New Orleans, just before Hurricane Katrina hits. Because Zane is new to the city, we learn through his conversations with his grandmother and through Zane's own observations the deep and complex history of this culture-rich town.

He has barely arrived when the mayor instructs everyone to evacuate in preparation for the storm. Zane gets separated from his grandmother when his beloved dog escapes from an open window in her preacher's van, and he chases after his pet--all the way back to her house on the Ninth Ward. This is most of all an adventure story. But as Zane learns more about his rescuers, Malvina Rawlins and her guardian, Truedell "Tru" Manning, a renowned jazz musician, readers also learn more about the culture of New Orleans, its traditions, its racial tensions, its economic divide. Armed security teams guard the homes of the rich, which are on higher ground. Rescue efforts take days and days. Malvina and Tru pass the time by telling Zane stories.

Philbrick describes the situation in a way that 9- and 10-year-olds can understand, yet with enough suspense and details to hold the attention of teen readers, too. Another book for 8- to 12-year-olds about life before and after Hurricane Katrina is Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes. And for older readers, the books that delve into the nuances and rich past of New Orleans are the historical novels Richard Peck's The River Between Us, and Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys. In many ways, the city of New Orleans reveals in microcosm the tensions that have haunted and continue to plague the United States, as well as the many gifts of food, music, language, celebration and culture that one city's residents have given to the nation.

"Research Rapture"

Ruta Sepetys

New Orleans, as Ruta Sepetys characterizes it in Out of the Easy, is aligned with other American towns and cities in 1950, placing limitations on women, and classifying people in terms of race and economic status. It is difficult, if not impossible to break down those barriers, yet narrator Jo Morraine tries.

A gift of antique opera glasses led Ruta Sepetys to New Orleans, and a jeweler who'd been poisoned. Next, she stumbled upon a biography of a New Orleans madam named Norma Wallace, and Sepetys was on her way to "research rapture," as she calls it. She got lost in the details. These details ground the novel, and the author's themes stretch across decades. As the daughter of a prostitute, Jo believes she has few options. New Orleans is an economically striated world into which it's difficult to break. Still, a bookseller/mystery writer offers Jo a job and a place to stay. 

While working the cash register in the bookstore, Jo meets a Smith student. She becomes determined to apply to Smith College and to escape a world in which she feels imprisoned. The life Jo was born into is not easy; but it also won't be easy to break away.