A.D. : New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld

Although I am not that familiar with graphic books, the drawing on the cover of this book got my attention right away. Hurricane Katrina is pictured as an enormous swirling mushroom-like cloud descending on the city of New Orleans. Josh Neufeld, the author and illustrator, has written another nonfiction graphic book on his travels in Europe and Asia, and is a contributing artist for the work of the graphic realist Harvey Pekar, best known for the series American Splendor. You can see the original version of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge online at www.smithmag.net. Larry Smith, the story-telling website’s creator, suggested Neufeld do a serial on Katrina’s survivors, after Neufeld had published a book recounting his experience of helping out with the Red Cross in Biloxi, Mississippi after the storm.
In the book, we follow the experiences of seven people in New Orleans, based on real life characters, as they lived through Katrina. After the ominous preface - a series of drawings showing the city, the storm slowly approaching and then wreaking havoc, the subsequent flooding and desolation – the story then goes back in time, introducing the characters and their reactions to the news of the impending hurricane. Neufeld is bent on giving us the complete picture of their experiences, from the foul language many use, to the gritty details of having to tend to bodily functions without benefit of restrooms.
As you witness the different reactions to the emergency, you realize each are dealing with different pressures and needs. Denise, a social worker living with her mom who is a hospital technician, goes to the hospital to shelter but finds their promised room has been given away to employees with more status. Abbas, a convenience store owner, decides to stay by his store with a friend, only to end up on the roof, with everything gone in the flood. As an outsider, it was striking for me to realize the impact of the flooding – how the storm was one thing, but the levees’ destruction caused the real disaster. You can see more clearly how so many could really not evacuate, and the calamity of their very real abandonment by the authorities. And the graphic format is invaluable in its ability to show the immediacy and the starkness of the reality, which proved so overwhelming in spite of how resourceful everyone tried to be.