This book takes us deep in the heart of Mississippi. A black family living in poverty and dysfunction. Add the tension of a hurricane that is heading their way gives the reader a captivating and raw story. The title is interesting and my guess is the writer is directing our attention to the rawness of the accounts of this family. After the death of their mother during childbirth the husband falls into depression and drinks his life away letting his children survive by their own means. And yet the threads of a good and loving family have been instilled in the bones of the 3 teenagers by their mothers existence. The dialog is harsh and ugly. Their living conditions atrocious. I couldn't put the book down my attention absorbed in their fight to survive life, mixed with a hurricane. It was not an easy read. The powerful descriptions had me reading paragraphs over again numerous times to fully understand what was transpiring. I can see why it won a writers award the year it was published-2011. They call this "the first great romance about Katrina" and I have no doubt it deserves this title!This book is a monument. A human encyclopedia of life at the Bois...Love presents itself through the family relationships of brothers and one sister... Wild love, made of survival, cooperation, fending for space and the right to live... The intricate relation between Esch, Skeetah, Randall and Junior and Skeetah's dog China, the crude smell of sweat, blood and tears... Katrina coming just in time to splinter and scatter all the lives of those leaving at the Bois, the fight for survival turned into more love, the ties that bind not merely psychologically, but with arms that sustain each other, legs that cling to trees, bitter sweat that keeps on dripping as a reaction to un-being...Wild, violent, and yet full of tenderness, a hymn to life even in the hardest of circumstances, a must read.Maria Carmo,Lisbon, 12 November 2014.
What do You think about No Coração Da Tempestade (2014)?
This book was totally engrossing. It was both emotional and tense and beautifully written.
—Rufus
So beautifully written it took me a while to realize how depressing it was.
—bubba
Brought Katrina to life in a raw, sometimes sickening, way.
—abhi
Wonderfully written shades of Zora Neale Hurston.
—Abba
