It’s easy in today’s busy and chaotic world to lose faith in people in general, and see more of the bad side of things rather than the good. This can be especially true when we think back to events during and after Hurricane Katrina. But this new book by Margaret McMullan called Aftermath Lounge, tells stories of hope and strength from those that had to find a way through the devastation.
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed 95% of the small coastal town of Pass Christian, Mississippi. With a 28-foot storm surge, the highest recorded in U.S. history, 55-foot waves, and winds reaching 120 mph, the town was wiped off the map—temporarily.
Award-winning author Margaret McMullan saw the destruction firsthand. Her family’s historic Gulf Coast home—her father’s beloved southern jewel—was one of the houses in Pass Christian devastated by Katrina. Despite the chaos immediately following the storm, McMullan’s family was among the first to rebuild and donated to the Red Cross, the Pass Christian fire station, and the Pass Christian library.
During this time, McMullan witnessed small acts of heroism that inspired her to write about the community and its people, and how tragedy shapes our character. In 2010, she was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship to complete the project.
Growing up in the south, we’ve had our own close calls with hurricanes over the years.
How the cleanup, the sorting, the caring for others and not just our own families…
It’d be real easy to get caught up in just taking care of ourselves, only worrying about our family’s clothes and housing, etc. If we had enough to eat or a safe place to sleep.
But in this book, we see not only the absolute devastation but those who rise up out of it, starting over with nothing at all but the others in their community.
We can see each other through the eyes of the characters in the short stories within this book. Children, adults, the elderly…those people you’d find yourself with every day. How different and how similar they saw the world around them and the obstacles that would rise before them.
While Aftermath Lounge is a work of fiction, it is based on the real Hurricane Katrina and the characteristics and people the author saw around her after the storm was over. So it’s inspired by true stories you could say. And it’s definitely worth a read, to see how bad it can get and what we can do to make it better.
Pick up a copy of Aftermath Lounge today at Amazon. It would also make a great book for a book club or small group study.
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