This book is about two devastating events that happened in my life in 2005. The first one was the loss of my youngest son. He left this life in a trucking accident. Most of his twenty-four years, he wanted to be a tractor trailer driver. Driving the big rig was all he wanted to do since he could walk and talk. The second one is about the home we lost two months after the passing of Anthony. Hurricane Katrina came through the Gulf Coast and destroyed our home and everything we owned. We experienced life on the street for the next week. It is an ordeal that I never want to experience again. When I left New Orleans the only thing I had left was my purse and the clothes on my back. We lost everything. I have recovered from most of the material things I lost. I was able to purchase them again. I have accepted the fact that God doesn't make mistakes and he knows what's best, but I have not totally recovered from the loss of my son. There are days that I'm totally fine. Then there are days that I feel the pain of the loss. My good days do outweigh my sad days, so I don't complain. It is God who has blessed me and brought me through and I'm grateful.

Overcoming Katrina tells the stories of 27 New Orleanians as they fought to survive Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Their oral histories offer first-hand experiences: three days on a roof with Navy veteran Leonard Smith; at the convention center with waitress Eleanor Thornton; and with Willie Pitford, an elevator man, as he rescued 150 people in New Orleans East. Overcoming approaches the question of why New Orleans matters, from perspectives of the individuals who lived, loved, worked, and celebrated life and death there prior to being scattered across the country by Hurricane Katrina. This book's twenty-seven narrators range from Mack Slan, a conservative businessman who disparages the younger generation for not sharing his ability to make "good, rational decisions," to Kalamu ya Salaam, who was followed by the New Orleans Police Department for several years as a militant defender of Black Power in the late 1960s and '70s. These narratives are memorials to the corner stores, the Baptist churches, the community health clinics, and those streets where the aunties stood on the corner, and whose physical traces have now all been washed away. They conclude with visions of a safer, equitably rebuilt New Orleans. *Scroll down for more audio excerpts from Overcoming Katrina*.

A passionate romance leads to supernatural mystery in this historical thriller based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. When Sleepy Hollow’s new schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, arrives in the spooky little village, Katrina Van Tassel is instantly drawn to him. Through their shared love of books and music, they form a friendship that quickly develops into romance. Ichabod knows he has nothing to offer the wealthy Katrina—unlike her childhood friend-turned-enemy, Brom Van Brunt, who is the suitor Katrina’s father favors. But when romance gives way to passion, Ichabod and Katrina sneak into the woods after dark to be together—all while praying they do not catch sight of Sleepy Hollow’s legendary Headless Horseman. That is, until All Hallows’s Eve, when Ichabod suddenly disappears, leaving Katrina alone and in a perilous position. Enlisting the help of her friend—and rumored witch—Charlotte Jansen, Katrina seeks the truth of Ichabod Crane’s disappearance. What they find forces Katrina to question everything she once knew, and to wonder if the Headless Horseman is perhaps more than just a story after all.

Every small town has a news reporter, one who cant wait for the news to be made known. And so it was in my small village. Our trumpeter ran wildly through the main street and all the side streets announcing the news in a rather loud and musical manner. The women ran to their balconies each time they heard his voice, but this time his voice had a stronger tone denoting the urgency of his message. As he was busy running and shouting the news, he wanted to be the first to spread the monumental event. There was no rewardthis is how he wasthis is what he enjoyed doing. Men gathered in small groups in front of the local cafs, while women gathered in less visible areas, but all with one common interest. They wanted to find out why and how this event could have happened. Katrina was only sixteen years old. The villagers were upset. They were angry at her parents for giving their consent for Katrina to marry and move to another continent. After all, she was their only daughter, and it seemed that their deci-sion to send her away held some kind of dark secret. Unaware of how quickly the news had traveled, Katrina was caught by surprise when walking to her grandmothers house, people stopped her to find out what happened. She simply kept walking. In a small Cretan village in the 1950s, Katrina spends much of her time at her grandmothers house. This is where she finds a safe haven, and in the small cha-pel of the property, Katrina reveals her secret to God. The opportunity to marry a young American at the age of sixteen presents itself as the only exit, not realizing the many obstacles awaiting her. Fifty years later, Katrina recounts her life and visits her small town one more time in order to bring a sense of closure to her life. Her parents home is void of life, and she visits their gravesite so that she can finally accept their exit and her emergence into a world really missed and never forgotten.

"Lost in Katrina is powerful! It is the human experience during the worst storm in America's history. Mike Schaefer has captured the stories of those who not only miraculously survived, but went on to become heroes." --Angela Hill, WWL-TV anchor, New Orleans "Mike Schaefer listens. And because he listens so well, we get to hear the real stories of Katrina and St. Bernard Parish. I've seen the aftermath there with my own eyes and thought what must it have been like when the storm hit, when the floods came? Now we know. And what a story." --Harry Smith, CBS News "When friends ask me what Katrina was really like, this is the book I'll recommend to them. The individual stories Mike tells, of survival and loss, desperation and heroism, perfectly capture the unreal chaos that was Katrina. Even if, like I did, you think you know all about the storm and its aftermath, you'll find something new, and, no doubt, inspiring, in this book." --Tracy Smith, CBS News correspondent This book offers insightful, emotional accounts of life before, during, and immediately after Hurricane Katrina in a parish that seemingly disappeared from the government's sight. While President Bush was shaking hands with FEMA director Michael Browne ("Brownie," as he will long be remembered) on the fourth day after the storm, St. Bernard Parish was struggling to salvage what they could. As the rest of the world watched the worst of humanity emerge on television, ordinary people did extraordinary things to save the parish that found itself almost completely submerged in floodwater. Heart-wrenching stories of the human will to survive offer an inside perspective on what it means to be a survivor of Hurricane Katrina.

The first book that J. Malcolm Garcia ever bought would impact his life in a way that the then twelve-year-old could have never imagined. The Day the Red Baron Died plunged Garcia into the intrigue and excitement of the World War I German flying ace's life and death. Garcia was enraptured and brimming with questions. His mother encouraged the curious boy to write to the book's author, Dale M. Titler. When the author replied, a friendship began that shaped Garcia's life. In Riding through Katrina with the Red Baron's Ghost, Garcia chronicles his relationship with Titler. It was that connection that brought Garcia to New Orleans only two weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city and its citizens. Not having heard from his friend in years, Garcia made the split-second decision to go to New Orleans to try to find the man who meant so much to him. A harrowing account of New Orleans directly after Katrina—told in Garcia's award-winning journalistic style—Riding through Katrina with the Red Baron's Ghost tells a personal story of a thirty-year bond that defined a young man, as well as the universal story of the horror and devastation Katrina left in its wake.

"Warm hearted narrative" "Unrefined poetic testimony" ".provides awareness to a nation"