The Hurricanes: One High School Team's Homecoming After Katrina
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Product Description
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina pummeled the lower end of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, a peninsula housing one of the nation’s most isolated, vulnerable, and vital counties. A year later several ravaged communities came together to form South Plaquemines High. Kids who were former rivals defiantly nicknamed their football team the Hurricanes and made the 2006 state playoffs. In 2007, South Plaquemines set its sights on a state championship. The Hurricanes used a trailer as a makeshift locker room and lifted weights in a destroyed gym that had no electricity. For the players, many of them still living in FEMA trailers, football offered a refuge. Bestselling author Jeré Longman spent two seasons following the team. In The Hurricanes, the team’s journey provides a lens through which to view the legacy of Katrina, the cycle of poverty in rural America, and the attempt to maintain traditions in the face of uncertainty. Football is a familiar remnant of the way things used to be—and a sign of hope in a place of disaster.
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
A true story, but one that misses the sad point
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Comment:
I'll start out by saying that this is a good story. This book focuses on football, and the story of a team and teams coming together to rebuild their lives. It's a "rags-to-riches" tale that will surely one-day make a good movie, but it ignores the real tragedy that I was thinking about the entire time. What it doesn't focus on is the real tragedy of why rural Louisiana is dirt poor and uneducated. A year after Katrina, officials are proud to announce that the new sod is on the field, yet there is no school cafeteria. The scoreboard works, but there are not enough books to go around at school. More examples abound like this abound, but it is clear to me why communities like this will continue to decline as they focus more on their fleeting football success than on graduating educated kids from their high schools. A few of these kids will end up in college, and maybe one every few years will play pro ball, but 200 others will be poorly served by their lack of a decent education.
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Summary:
A Great Read, Great story.
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Comment:
A well written, vibrant story about life after Katrina in a unique community. The story, based in a rural community surrounded by the Mississippi river and the Gulf of Mexico, accurately describes real personalities who make the community special in many ways.
If you are a fan of athletics, community life and the struggles of rebuilding life, then you will enjoy this book. One of the best books I have read in a long time.
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Summary:
True story of Louisana
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Comment:
Jere Longman has written an excellent book chronicling one parish's reaction to Hurricane Katrina, focusing on the high school football team but weaving in incredibly useful information about the people and history of Plaquemines Parish and all of Southeast Louisiana. It's a story of the importance of football in the fabric of a community in southern Louisiana.
Having played high school football in Louisiana myself "back in the day", I recognized so much in the story of coach Cyril Crutchfield and the Plaquemines Parish residents. The loud, profane and physical football coach. The sheriff's deputies who were former players themselves and still long to ride the bus with the team to away games. The players whose entire lives revolve around the sport. The anachronism of the wealth of resources and the grinding poverty of that part of the world. It really hit home.
The book is well-written and balanced - as an example, Longman strives to present the Belle Chasse side of the Plaquemines Parish feud, rather than simply showing the South Plaquemines/Port Sulphur side. And by tracking Randall Mackey, Jamal Recasner and the Bastrop Rams, he shows the intertwining of relationships in that part of the world.
As this review is written, Coach Crutchfield, Ridge Turner, Lyle Fitte and the rest of the Hurricanes are on their way to another state championship. One Times-Picayune reporter recently noted that they only way the Hurricanes don't win state is if they give up the sport of football between now and December. I recommend you read this book, and follow the Hurricanes through the rest of their season.
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