City of Refuge

"There are books that give back to art and there are books that give back to life," Mary Gaitskill writes of Tom Piazza's critically acclaimed novel, City of Refuge. "This book is among the latter." Beloved by reviewers and readers across the country, City of Refuge is a panoramic novel of family and community, of trial and resilience. Told with passion, wisdom, and a deep understanding of American life in our time, City of Refuge has inspired a reaction from readers that transcends the everyday-from the advance praise of Richard Russo, Richard Ford, Douglas Brinkley and others, through the flood of glowing comments on Amazon.com, readers have truly recognized that one's world changes in reading this novel.

SJ Williams, a carpenter and widower, lives and works in the Lower Ninth Ward, the community where he was born and raised. His sister, Lucy, is a soulful mess, and SJ has been trying to keep her son, Wesley, out of trouble. Across town, Craig Donaldson, a Midwestern transplant and the editor of the city's alternative paper, faces deepening cracks in his own family. New Orleans' music and culture have been Craig's passion, but his wife, Alice, has never felt comfortable in the city. The arrival of their two children has inflamed their arguments the wisdom of raising a family there.

When the news comes of a gathering hurricane-named Katrina-the two families make their own very different plans to weather the storm. The Donaldsons join the long evacuation convoy north, across Lake Pontchartrain and out of the city. SJ boards up his windows and brings Lucy to his house, where they wait it out together, while Wesley stays with a friend in another part of town. But the long night of wind and rain is only the beginning-and when the levees give way and the flood waters come, the fate of each family changes forever.

Though set during Hurricane Katrina, the stories Piazza tells, and the generous heart that animates them, reach beyond that moment to explore deeper truths about hope, despair, and transcendence.