New Orleans Bestselling First-person Katrina Book in Fourth Printing for National Release

New Orleans, LA (PRWEB) July 26, 2006

“The Five People You Meet in Hell: Surviving Katrina,” by Robert Smallwood, is the only book-length first-person account of the horror of the hurricane and its maddening aftermath in New Orleans. Readers will learn new details about killings, looting and police misconduct in the thrilling book, which has been selling out at local New Orleans stores, forcing a fourth printing, which also includes an update of the book.

In the fast-paced true story, readers experience what it was like in the French Quarter as the storm approached and made landfall. They’ll meet five unique survivors who endured Hurricane Katrina, among them actor/comedian Harry Anderson, star of the 80s sitcom Night Court; Finis, who is Gennifer Flowers’ (of Bill Clinton infamy) ex-husband; and a salty, 81-year-old retired sailor who rode out the storm and the chaotic aftermath.

Smallwood was there and he takes readers inside the experience in amazing detail, including the explosions, looting, gunfire and fire in anarchy of the aftermath. Sometimes he entertains with gallows humor.

Readers get a glimpse in the conversations and feelings that survivors had while cut off from power, water and the media. During one of the worst hurricanes ever to hit the American mainland, Smallwood rode it out in a shaky French Quarter apartment and hung in for another ten days afterward. With no lights, electricity, gas, or clean running water, he survived on a mix of pure guts and hope. He had revolvers and high-powered rifles pointed at him, helped police loot stores for basic necessities of survival, and learned how to survive in an environment of chaos, danger, and anarchy. But through it all, he describes the humanity he found among other survivors around him as they bonded in a struggle to hang onto the tattered threads of the fabric of normal, day-to-day life.

Local officials and law enforcement personnel struggled helplessly to restore and maintain order in a hot, steamy cauldron where tens of thousands of people were cast into the street with nowhere to go. Smallwood saw first-hand, massive gatherings of displaced human beings waiting anxiously and uncertainly for days for some signs of relief. He witnessed the extremes of humanity and brutality, anarchy and order, sadness and humor, despair and hope. And through it all, he maintains a storyteller's eye for colorful narrative and even more colorful characters, the kind found only in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Smallwood states, “I wanted to get the real story out, from the time the Katrina hit through its aftermath. It is rough, real, violent, raw and at times, poignant. Just like the experience itself.”

The riveting first-person account is written in such a clear and arresting style it has readers staying up all night to finish the book. “Unique and gutsy!” said New York Observer critic Rex Reed, “the kind of literary “You are There” you can’t put down!”

“Read it, met the five people and find the treasure!” said writer and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu.

Actor and comedian Harry Anderson exclaimed, “I especially like the parts about me!”

Dean M. Shapiro, author and critic comments, "Robert Smallwood was down there in the trenches where the real action was, while the story was unfolding. He was there while human suffering was occurring on unprecedented levels in our nation's history. We are there with him, as his narrative vividly transports us into a nightmarish, Kafkaesque realm few in this country have ever experienced. It ranks high up there with Samuel Pepys' journal describing the Great Fire of London of 1666.”

The book predicts that the artistic community in New Orleans will return with even greater prominence. Smallwood begins his account with, “Although the nation and the world pities New Orleans and mourns its death-by-media, those whose heart and spirit live there know that what makes the city so unique hasn’t been destroyed by the effects of Katrina, but rather, temporarily dispersed. People in Houston, Denver, Atlanta, New York and elsewhere are getting a watered-down dose of New Orleans culture - an inimitable romantic brew of history, music, art, cuisine, corruption, carnality, faith, and freedom. And as these elements return to New Orleans, like moths to a flame, with the focused fervor that tragedy brings to art, it will rise to be even greater than it once was: the most hauntingly distinct and enjoyable place in America and cultural icon for the world.”

"The Five People You Meet in Hell: Surviving Katrina," is published by Bacchus Books of New Orleans and is available online at Amazon.com, as well as major Borders and Barnes & Noble bookstores nationwide. Members of the press may request interviews and a review copy by emailing the author directly.

The Five People You Meet In Hell: Surviving Katrina

By Robert Smallwood

Bacchus Books of New Orleans

246 pages

$16.99

About the Author: Robert Smallwood is a New Orleans French Quarter resident. He shares his birthplace, Davenport, Iowa with traditional jazz great Bix Beiderbecke and his birthday, July 5, with French writer and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Smallwood left Iowa and moved to New Orleans in 1982. He has published over 100 articles in computer trade journals and is regarded as an international expert in enterprise content management technologies. This is his first book.

Contact:

Robert Smallwood

504-324-2340

###