The Floating World

Set in New Orleans, this important and powerful novel follows the Boisdor family . . . in the months after Katrina. A profound, moving and authentically detailed picture of the storms emotional impact on those who lived through it. People In this dazzling debut about family, home, and grief, C. Morgan Babst takes readers into the heart of Hurricane Katrina and the life of a great city. As the storm is fast approaching the Louisiana coast, Cora Boisdor refuses to leave the city. Her parents, Joe Boisdor, an artist descended from freed slaves who became the citys preeminent furniture makers, and his white Uptown wife, Dr. Tess Eshleman, are forced to evacuate without her, setting off a chain of events that leaves their marriage in shambles and Cora catatonicthe victim or perpetrator of some violence mysterious even to herself. This mystery is at the center of Babsts haunting and profound novel. Coras sister, Del, returns to New Orleans from the successful life she built in New York City to find her hometown in ruins and her family deeply alienated from one another. As Del attempts to figure out what happened to her sister, she must also reckon with the racial history of the city and the trauma of a disaster that was not, in fact, some random act of God but an avoidable tragedy visited on New Orleanss most vulnerable citizens. Separately and together, each member of the Boisdor clan must find the strength to remake home in a city forever changed.The Floating World is the Katrina story that needed to be toldone with a piercing, unforgettable loveliness and a vivid, intimate understanding of this particular place and its tangled past.