Wading Home

When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, chef and widower Simon Fortier knows how he plans to face the storm--riding it out inside his long-time home in the city's Treme district, just as he had through so many storms before. But when Katrina's waters rise and the city is torn apart by the storm's fury, Simon disappears. His son, Julian, learns of the storm's impact while attempting an aborted comeback in Tokyo to his career as a jazz trumpet star, which had been interrupted by a serious facial injury. He rushes home to a New Orleans he left years before, to search for a father with whom he'd been on difficult terms since the death of his mother. As Julian criss-crosses the city, searching for some word of his father and hoping that Simon had been able to escape his flooded home before the water overcame him, he reconnects with Matthew Parmenter, his father's erstwhile business partner and one of the most successful restauranteurs in New Orleans, and with Velmyra Hartley, the woman he left behind when he moved to New York to pursue his music career. Parmenter tells Julian it's urgent that Simon contact him, once he's found, so that he can settle old business with him--a claim Julian mistrusts. Velmyra and Julian grow close again while he continues his search for Simon back to Silver Creek, Louisiana, the small rural town where Simon grew up, and where a story of family entanglement and betrayal had played out over generations. As his search for Simon continues, Julian is drawn deeper into the troubles of Silver Creek, and closer once again to Velmyra. As he tries to come to grips with his father's likely fate and struggles to regain his trumpet chops, Julian slowly gains a deeper, richer understanding of the father with whom he'd been at odds. In this follow up to her critically acclaimed More Than You Know, Rosalyn Story has written a vivid and compelling story of how the complex culture of New Orleans and Louisiana has been marked forever by Katrina, even as it persists.