Heart Like Water is now a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Watch
an
exclusive interview with the author
which includes never-before-heard footage
of Clark's interviews, hilarious and horrific
alike, during Katrina's
immediate aftermath.
-feel free to rebroadcast or duplicate this podcast-
...Or
download it into iTunes or on your iPod 
French Quarter Fiction and other books edited by Joshua Clark.
"In
the growing constellation of Katrina stories, Josh Clark's masterful tale shines
brightest. The Apocalypse destroyed a city and ripped to shreds lives, but the
legibility of its profound inner impact had to wait for this book, which is a
love story. Clark's book is our 'Love in a Time of Cholera,' but, even more than
Marquez' novel, it is immediate and wrenching and true, while its rhythms, like
Marquez', are nothing short of majestic. Josh Clark has written the great non-fiction
New Orleans novel, a book that's here to stay."
Heart Like Water gives us not only a first-person history of a horrific time, but all the chaos and absurdity of that time. he has produced something that is not only entertaining, but an important document explaining how people adjust and survive." —John Barry, author of Rising Tide
Heart
Like Water is the result of this improbable and valiant choice, a wild, maddening,
funny, and touching account of the hour by hour struggle of those who simply refused
to leave the City that Care Forgot.”
—Valerie Martin, author of
Property and The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories
“There
has been a lot of talk about how time in New Orleans is split between Before Katrina
and After Katrina, and while that might be true, it's also a tricky way to erase
what went on during Katrina and after the levees failed. And who doesn't want
to erase the memory of CNN footage of the Convention Center, the Dome, and smiling
looters? Who doesn't want to forget the terrifying failures of people we trusted—and
paid—to take care of us? What makes Heart Like Water so powerful, important,
and lovely is that with this book Joshua Clark has made sure that we will not
forget that moment between Before and After, and in so doing he has provided something
we do not want to erase: a chorus of Katrina stories, stories not of simple victimization,
anger, and violence, but of love, heartbreak, and, somehow, hope.”
—Josh
Russell, author of Yellow Jack
“Mosquito-bitten and heart-scarred,
Joshua Clark pedaled and staggered through post-flood New Orleans, ascending the
failed levees and descending into the moldy remains of what was washed away: homes,
lives, relationships, futures. Heart Like Water is a compelling and frequently
breathtaking memoir of discovery, a necessary chronicle of our nation’s greatest
self-inflicted wound: Katrina.”
—Michael Tisserand, author of Sugarcane
Academy: How a New Orleans Teacher and His Storm-Struck Students Created a School
to Remember
Available now from Amazon (on sale!) or your favorite bookseller.
Read more about the most personal narrative and expansive oral history of Hurricane Katrina on Simon & Schuster's site HERE.
Read the Times-Picayune review.
"Joshua Clark has written a poignant,
evocative book about the city he loves. HEART LIKE WATER has the paradoxical ability
to both uplift and haunt."
—Douglas Brinkley
“For
those of us who still mourn and fear we will always mourn for our beloved New
Orleans, Joshua Clark’s memoir of the terrible Katrina—for which he
would not abandon the city—is a tough and beautiful thing. He has an eye
and an ear for the crucial details and he is also a really fine writer. You will
mourn anew reading this book, but it will help you heal.”
—Robert Olen Butler
"The scenes of physical devastation are matched by an uncompromising look at the emotional traumas that unfold in the storm's aftermath—yet through it all, Clark never fully abandons his sense of the absurd."
—From Publishers Weekly Starred Review.