"This is an essential document of the state of mind of New Orleanians before and during and after Katrina. It's raw, it's pained, it's outraged, it's heartbroken- all the things it should be.--Dave Eggers
"Cynthia Joyce exhumes the colloquial, hyper-literate voice of a population that is never so open as when its citizens are talking amongst themselves. In the process, she has brought to light the one thing outsiders could never comprehend, at least until now: the deep emotional scar Hurricane Katrina's levee breaches left on those who survived the disaster."--Brett Anderson, restaurants critic and features writer, NOLA.com
"These are postcards from a city that was on the very edge. They are selfies shot against a backdrop of unprecedented catastrophe. For survivors of Katrina, the collected blog posts will kick up raw memories, some cherished, some still harrowing. Readers lucky enough to have only wondered what disaster is like will find an answer. It's all here: the terror, the confusion, the compassion, the self-absorption, the posturing, the misinformation masquerading as insight -- above all the ties that held us together and made recovery possible".--Jed Horne, Author of
Breach of Faith, Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City "Most of us never got the real story of Hurricane Katrina. The real story lies in these heartbreaking pages: stories of good people who built happy lives for themselves, watching those lives get ripped apart by 15 feet of toxic flood water.
Please Forward offers a riveting montage of devastated voices waiting to hear from lost family members, waiting to be treated with respect by the outsiders who invaded their city, and waiting to see if there was anything left to rebuild once the waters finally receded."--Heather Havrilesky, author of the memoir
Disaster Preparedness "A collection of blog posts bears witness to the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As an assemblage of mostly short Internet writings from the two years after natural disaster and official mismanagement devastated New Orleans...the most powerful will move readers to outrage."--
Kirkus Reviews