The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous: Fighting to Save a Way of Life in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina

by Ken Wells and Ken Wells

Book Overview

How a plucky coterie of Louisiana shrimp-boat captains faced down the most destructive hurricane in U.S. history--only to realize that the struggle to preserve their centuries-old culture had just... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300121520
• ISBN13: 9780300121520
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Read 'Notes on Sources"

All the reviews are right on; this book is wonderful for many reasons. I was compelled to read beyond the end of the story into "Notes on Sources," where, on page 240, I found a paragraph about the Chalmette High School's post-storm video on the St. Bernard Parish school Web site at: www.stbernard.k12.la.us/ Click on "Our Story" in the left panel. It is excellent and will touch you deeply.

The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous

Seldom do I read a book that I just can't put down, but this book was just that! Except for the bare necessities of living for those 15 hours or so, I just soaked up every page like the proverbial sponge. I live in Louisiana and have experienced several serious hurricanes - in Jena during Audrey in the 50s, then in Baton Rouge for Betsy and Camille in the 60s. Since the 70s, I've lived in the northeast Louisiana Mississippi River Delta and rarely feel much effect from hurricanes except for the increased rains, winds, and tornadoes. We experienced Gustav just this year in a much more catastrophic way than usual. Katrina brought us evacuees that lived with us for 4 months. Therefore, I felt connected to the author's stories about the storm, its devastation and, subsequently, its snails-paced recovery. The personal stories of the peoples' lives in Terrebonne and St. Bernard were gripping, and I could tell the author's commitment and connectedness to the people. Some of his most interesting work was the description of how the lower parishes were settled by the Acadians, Ilenas, and others who remain committed to their homes in that area to this very day. I hear people say, "That place is just uninhabitable....why do they keep going back.....how could they rebuild after what they've gone through." Reading this work of their proud heritage, I can say that I now have a greater understanding of why they go back. It is their home.

A "Must Read"

Although I knew Ken Wells was a great writer after thoroughly enjoying his novels, this book was a completely different experience. It blew me away--although not literally, as happened to some of the people interviewed for this true account of hurricane Katrina in the parishes where the hurricane hit before New Orleans. The story was gripping, moving, and informative. Wells provides not only the riveting first person accounts of riding out the storm and the slow, subsequent recovery, but much useful background information about the culture of the area, as well as meteorological and political information about contributing causes of the disaster. I truly couldn't stop reading.

a great book by a great writer

Ken Wells can write. Let me repeat this fact. Ken Wells can write. If you like the grittiness of Rick Bragg or the majesty of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, you will like this book. I am a reader, presumably readers of these reviews share this avocation. My greatest joy is what I call being "stopped" while reading a book. By this I mean reading a line so beautiful or thoughtful that I am actually stopped. I am forced to put down the book and let the words pour over me. Again and again Mr. Wells' prose stopped me. Good Pirates is the story of courageous men and women fighting not only Hurricane Katrina, but for a way of life and a piece of America that most of their fellow countrymen do not even know exists. Wells, born and bred very near these bayous, knows these folks and their land in his soul --- and it shows. The courage of good pirates like Ricky Robin and the drama of their fight against Hurricane Katrina and what is called modern progress is inspiring. The site of the battleground, essentially the same land where the Battle of New Orleans was fought in 1812, is the swampy end of America where Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico occupy the same space. The land is described by Mr. Wells so beautifully that it is as breathtaking as the book's narrative of the struggle of man versus nature. The following excerpt is an example: "Uplanders might find the greater landscape monotonous, the way a driver across Kansas might finally declare the endless canvas of golden wheat fields monochromatic. But bayou folk never tire of it., for they divine, in observations steeped in time, how these landscapes shift with the light and the tides and the seasons; how routinely they give up their wonders and their mysteries. Round the right bend in the summer twilight on the road to Delacroix Island and you might catch a bull alligator nosing out to feed, carving a V-shaped ripple on still waters painted by a dying sun. Or you can watch pelicans clowning above schools of cavorting porpoises not a half mile down from Ricky Robin's house, where the MR-GO meets sleepy Bayou La Loutre. Or you might drive the back road to Yscloskey in the fall and be startled by the sudden appearance of a marauding school of redfish in a placid lagoon that looks like it's been there for ten thousand years." Mr. Wells has been a journalist for over thirty years, including stints at the Miami Herald and the Wall Street Journal. He has lived in Miami, San Francisco and London and now lives and works in the Manhattan area and works for a Conde Naste publication. However, this book proves that you can not take the bayou out of the boy. Mr. Wells told Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air that the recognition that his life growing up on Bayou Black in Louisiana was markedly different than his fellow reporters came while working in his Wall Street Journal office. He realized that because of his bayou roots, he was probably the only person in the room that had ever

"Damn, that SOB is coming up fast!"

I've rarely read as gripping, horrifying, and inspiring a book as Ken Wells' story of what happened when The Storm hit the low-lying bayou parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines. As a reporter for the "Wall Street Journal," Wells, himself a Louisiana native, saw the devastation in the two parishes immediately after Katrina. His The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous is an oral history of sorts of what happened to them, a story that got "forgotten" by a nation focused on New Orleans proper, and how the folks in the parish have fared since. St Bernard and Plaquemines are shrimping parishes, and Wells' story focuses on the Robin clan, a shrimping family that's lived and worked in the area for over 200 years. Ricky Robin, captain of a 70 ton trawler called the "Lil Rick"--a ship built by hand--sails up the Violet Canal hoping to weather out the hurricane. But surges whipped up by the 140+ mph winds get him in trouble almost at once. In one of the book's most harrowing passages, Ricky remembers seeing a 20 foot skiff blowing through the air and then skidding across the roiling waves like a thrown stone. In the three days following the worst of the storm, Ricky gives shelter on the "Lil Rick" to hundreds of homeless survivors, sometimes hammering out dixieland tunes on his trumpet to keep up their spirits. Disasters can bring out the worst in frightened and desperate people. But it brought out the very best in Ricky Robin. Although Robin is the star of the book, Wells also introduces us to others who weathered the story-- such as Ricky's cousin Ronald Robin. Ronald, a veteran hurricane survivor, also tried to weather the storm in Violet Canal. But like so many others, he was stunned by Katrina's ferocity and swiftness. "Damn," he remembers exclaiming, "that SOB is coming up fast!" Wells stayed in touch with the St. Bernard and Plaquemines survivors, and the second half of the book tells the story of how they've coped since the disaster. It's not been easy. The parishes are still pretty much devastated, and inhabitants are bitter--they call Katrina the "federal storm," convinced that the government could've prevented the greater part of the destruction had the levees been more carefully maintained. Ricky, for all his outward easy-going nature, suffers from flashbacks. But at the end of the day, the story that Wells tells is one of astounding courage, human fellowship, and old-fashioned pluck. As Wells himself asserts, the story of the "good pirates" is "a narrative of the human spirit, a story about a decidedly blue-collar, ruggedly independent people whose decisions to face down Katrina lay in deep cultural anchors. It is a story of a people who--when they realize no one is coming to save them--rise up to save themselves and their neighbors in the face of raw peril and a disaster of unimaginable proportions." Oh yeah: Wells is one heckuva writer too. Readers will be captivated by his style. Six stars.