Author Tom Piazza was at his New Orleans home packing for a signing tour in support of his latest novel, “City of Refuge” - the heartbreakingly redemptive novel about two very different New Orleans families and their respective confrontations with Hurricane Katrina and the storm's subsequent horrors.

Piazza's travel preparations took on a jagged and surreal dimension as Hurricane Gustav looped into the Gulf of Mexico and appeared to target the Louisiana coast. Inasmuch as Piazza and his partner, Mary, had experienced significant emotional, property and collateral damage as a result of Katrina - as eloquently described in his emotional post-storm book “Why New Orleans Matters” - his trip preparations were adjusted significantly.

”As we became aware Gustav was likely to hit,” Piazza says, calling from a “City of Refuge” tour stop in New York, “we started rolling up different rugs that had replaced the rugs that were ruined in (Katrina); we took all the musical instruments and books upstairs that had replaced the ones we lost in that flood. It was acknowledging a real possibility that we would be reliving that whole scene.”

Piazza pauses, reflecting. “Everything's different now. New Orleanians have been through plenty of hurricane evacuations. It didn't start with Katrina. The difference is that Katrina hit and we now know from very intense and painful experience what is possible when wetlands have eroded and there are faulty levees. Suddenly, one isn't just evacuating to stay out of harm's way; one is on a very real level reliving the Katrina trauma. I don't know how tenable that experience is if it's three times a year.”

”City of Refuge” eloquently conveys these oft-conflicting senses of sadness, fear, spirit and resiliency in evocative fashion.

The plot alternately follows two story lines and starts the weekend before Katrina hits. SJ Williams, an African-American carpenter and widower, is a lifelong and demographically representative resident of the Ninth Ward - one of the neighborhoods blasted off the face of the city by the storm. He serves as a protector and mentor to his troubled and alcoholic sister Lucy and her son Wesley, a good kid who might be segueing into the New Orleans gang culture.

Across town, Craig Donaldson and his wife Alice are transplanted Midwesterners who have grown to love the city and worked passionately to assimilate its music, traditions and culture. Craig is the editor of the city's alternative weekly newspaper, but trouble has been brewing in the family because Alice is increasingly uncomfortable raising their two young children in an admittedly violent city.

The hurricane rips these domestic scenarios apart. Williams, Lucy and Wesley end up in three different locations - Houston, Albany and Missouri - after they failed to evacuate and barely escape the flood. The Donaldsons leave in time and end up in the familiar bosom of Chicago. For both sets of characters, the swirling sense of bewilderment, shock, desperation and uncertainty play out against the innate commitment of family and community and how these extreme situations force them to deal with emotions long-hidden.

”The novel allows you to approach the mass experience through the refracted perspective of many characters' personal and private experiences,” Piazza says. “And, somehow, I think, I was able to use my own emotional insights and experiences and those shared with me by people I know.”

As the Williamses gradually find their way back to one another, long-simmering fractures begin to heal as they evaluate the possibility of returning to New Orleans. Meanwhile, Craig is bitter that Alice immediately assumes Chicago is their ultimate destiny - while dealing with his own suppressed sadness that, perhaps, she's right.

Piazza is a deft stylist, and his depictions and various scenarios are compelling and irresistible. You really care about these people and want them to make the right choices even as you want the city to magically resurrect. This contrasts wonderfully with Piazza's decision to render the actual storm and its immediate and hellish aftermath through hallucinogenic and near stream-of-consciousness images. They flash by so quickly and viscerally, invoking all five senses and a scalpel-honed sense of horror and confusion that the scenes should be required reading in any modern poetry class.

”It became clear to me that I couldn't follow each of these characters' experiences through the rising flood water and in the Superdome or whatever. The reader would jump out a window,” he says. “The reality was that all individual dignity and sense of individual fate was melted down into a mockery of what human life really is and that was an experience that was shared by every one who was in those places. I thought this was the best way to get to the heart of the black hole of the days following the storm.”

Piazza says he wrote the novel quickly, in an almost “fever dream” state, and that he thinks the process was his way of dealing with the post-trauma stress of his and Mary's own experiences with Katrina. With “City of Refuge,” his artistry allows the rest of us to experience this indelible event in the most redemptive fashion - through a genuine work of literature.

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