When It Becomes Real

With my new novel, Jazzy, I’m writing about the destruction of New Orleans following Katrina. Yesterday, I traveled to Plaquemines Parish where Katrina made landfall. Now I’m writing about the destruction of Venice, the last point in Louisiana reachable by road before the Mississippi River pours into the Gulf. The community, “protected” by ring levees, was inundated by Katrina’s surge. Like a filled bathtub, the water couldn’t recede. Everything was underwater. My protagonist, a nine-year old girl who recently lost her father and is now losing every place that contains memories of her dad, is having a hard time with this. So am I.