by Sarah M. Broom
Reviewed by Linda:
Sarah Broom’s first book has made quite an impression, winning the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction and being named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the Year for 2019. The book tells the story of the house where she grew up, the youngest in a large family, in East New Orleans. She describes her childhood and escape in early adulthood from the poverty of her neighborhood. After Hurricane Katrina strikes, she is drawn back, seeking to locate family members who landed in many different states, and to kept tabs on the damaged house. Her largely African American neighborhood suffered greatly during the storm, and the ways that the official response differed among neighborhoods is a grave injustice. Her struggle to take in all that has happened to her family makes this a powerful account.