In August 2005, SJ Williams, a carpenter who has lived the Lower Ninth Ward all his life, is headed for a confrontation with his young nephew Wesley, who has just been arrested for beating up his girlfriend. SJ’s older sister Lucy, Wesley’s mother, is a soulful mess beloved by everyone, but she has been unable to corral her son, and SJ fears he is about to be lost for good. Meanwhile, across town, Craig Donaldson, a Midwestern transplant and the editor of the city’s (fictitious) weekly newspaper, is facing deepening cracks in his own family. Craig’s love for New Orleans music and culture brought them to the city, but his wife Alice’s alarm at the city’s crime, poverty, and bad schools has become an ever-widening wedge between her and Craig, and their two young children Annie and Malcolm.

When the storm breaks, and the levee with it, SJ’s home is flooded and his family scattered – Lucy to the Superdome and then to Missouri, Wesley to upstate New York, and SJ to Texas, where he struggles to locate, and reunite with, Lucy and Wesley. The Donaldsons, too, find their family strained to breaking by the storm: Alice persuades Craig to evacuate, and they flee—first to Jackson, Mississippi, and then finally to Alice’s family in Chicago. After the storm, Craig is determined to return, but he soon realizes that he may have to choose between the city he loves or the family he hoped to raise there.

Reaching across America—from the neighborhoods of New Orleans to Houston, Chicago, and elsewhere—CITY OF REFUGE explores this turning point in American culture. Like John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, it sounds complex chords of race, class, culture, and regional identity, but always through the double helix of these two families’ lives. Piazza’s characters will live in readers’ minds and hearts, and their encounter with the storm will confront us all with raw truths about our nation and ourselves. Rich with emotional insight and unforgettable scenes, it will challenge, and deeply move, every reader.