Part I

My Thoughts

It is interesting to me having no expectations because this book was a referral from Adriane, so I hadn't read the book jacket at the store and thought this might be interesting, but was going on a hunch I would like it. And Adriane, thanks this book has been one that I can't put down but do because I have too! Books like this are one's I truly enjoy and take something from every time.

Hurricane Katrina was something that we can all relate to in different ways because like 9/11 we were glued to our TVs watching hoping for the best but realizing the worst had happened. I can relate to Luke in different ways, ways of at the beginning not thinking he knew anyone there but wanting to know more and his creative sense of seeing the people knowing there as a story to be heard. Until he got the call that his father was missing and then it was too real, but with the relationship he had with his father, shaky but loved him because he was his father, he took time to reflect on the past and wonder what the best thing to do was. And in the end he did go to Louisiana to have his eyes opened to something he could of never fathomed to be so true and terrible for those who survived and living with the destruction and death of those who didn't.

By seeing these people who had lost so much, he could relate by losing his mother in a horrific way of depression until her untimely death of what I feel the author is trying to say by suicide but never really presses the issue. Then his father so heart broken and in despair that he gets to the point of self destruction to make Luke wonder why should I go find him, he is probably dead anyway. It's sad to me to think that parents would lose touch with their children and that children wouldn't know how or where to contact their parents, but it happens everyday and in some way (not exactly the same way) it has happened in my life.

This book to me puts a name, face and emotions to what really happened after Hurricane Katrina came through and even though it's one man's prospective, it's one that I never considered from just watching the news and it makes me feel like we did just leave these people high and dry, and that they had no where to go, no where to turn and in a sense maybe death was their only option. That to me is so sad to have people in the U.S.A. think that no one cares and honestly after reading this book, and getting to this point I think they really thought no one cared or was going to come help them or their families. And it definitely opened the eyes and camera of Luke who could have never imagined what he found, and made him feel like he had to continue telling the story by talking to people, taking pictures and continue on his journey of finding the father he still thinks is dead. I am hoping it will be a happy reunion but at this point really have no opinion which way it's going to go.

On to Part II!!

Happy Reading!