1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina
By: Chris Rose / Narrated By: Bronson Pinchot
Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
Brings back memories, maybe too many…
Yeah, yeah, yeah: I went to New Orleans in February of 2006 when Louisiana was kicking out all out-of-state animal rescue groups, and all out-of-state animal rescue groups were making a final desperate push to get homeless animals off the streets and into other shelters.
No, what I saw then was not the abject horror show that occurred in August and September after Katrina (and later Rita), but I was a total-PTSD spaz by the time Rita hit, and what I saw in New Orleans pretty much solidified that.
Aaaaall those many, many houses with their spray-painted crosses, houses that were checked for victims, checked for the dead. How on EARTH can a person forget that?!?
So 1 Dead in Attic by journalist Chris Rose brought sooo many memories back. You wanna see what a ghost looks like? Don’t look for a haunted house or hotel, look at New Orleans in the year after.
When I was there, there was already a steady stream of traffic on the street that went by the Celebration Station Best Friends Animal Sanctuary was using as a holding/staging area. I danged near got clipped as I tried to cross it to get a Red Bull at a convenience store that was open. But on our free time, which there wasn’t much of, we once took a tour (me and women from New Jersey, Connecticut, and Canada along with our guide, a New Orleans native) of sooome spots, hard-hit and not-so-hard-hit, and it was distressing, it was depressing. Those crosses, oh those crosses…
And that’s what totally makes the audiobook for me, each of the four times I’ve listened to it.
Chris Rose might as well be the city itself as he is as empty, as haunted. Even though he wasn’t there when the storm hit, he went back early, he went back many times as his family stayed with his parents. He speaks of the heart of the city, its resilience, but as the book goes on, the destruction, one can hear, pretty much brings him to his knees. Yes, there is plenty of: We are STRONG! We are NEW ORLEANS! But as day after day of the stench-ridden streets, the destroyed homes and lives bear in on him, it all takes its toll. Soon, as he continues to write pieces for his paper, readers begin sending him info on anti-depressants, soon begin saying that they don’t need anymore darkness in their lives.
And soon, he begins to break in a big way.
Bronson Pinchot, whom I’d been listening to with growing admiration in previous audiobooks, really won me completely over in 1 Dead in Attic. Because, boy oh boy, he TOTALLY captured every single emotion that Rose writes of. Whether Rose is on the moon, shouting of New Orleans’ strength, whether he’s crashed and burned and is seeking a doctor’s advice about anti-depressants, Pinchot delivers it all so very well. I very much put myself firmly on Team Pinchot from this narration (even if in other audiobooks he sometimes sounds flat…), and at a few spots, I teared up a bit.
Hurricane Katrina was a very long time ago, but if you’ll humor me for a bit, you’ll allow me this, a year to remember the storm, the storms (After all, Hurricane Rita hit the shelters that took in some of Katrina’s animal victims, and Hurricane Wilma hit some of the shelters that took in Rita’s victims… it went on and on, of COURSE I was a spaz!!!), the appalling fear, devastation, the loss.
Hmmm… I thought I was totally over it; I thought I could look at photos of the dead (And I know, I know: There were a MULTITUDE of human victims, but there were sooo many agencies helping them. The animals? Well, that’s where I shine). Animals were STILL being found, tied to trees months afterward, surviving on insects and the paltry amount of fluid that accumulated in depressions on the ground; animals were out on the street, living out The Laws of the Jungle; mothers whose litters had died/been killed were nursing litters whose mothers had died/been killed. And I’m feeling down oh right about now.
So excuse me, dear Accomplice, if this is where I end this review. It was a HUGE thing to go through, and it’s a HUGE thing to remember. But if you have the room in your heart, the room in your life, give this audiobook a listen.
Give New Orleans a home…
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