Remembering Hurricane Katrina and finding solace in a new novel

The storm took away much of our lives but there were some blessings from Katrina.

“They say there are blessings from Katrina. Mine was I lost my job.”

I wrote that opening to the first novel in my Viola Valentine paranormal mystery series because it was an expression I had heard repeatedly while working as a post-Katrina volunteer coordinator. Not necessarily the loss of a job, but that something good had emerged from the nation’s worst natural disaster.

For me, however, it was a career change.

When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, I knew I had to do something to help my hometown of New Orleans so I served in hurricane recovery for two years with the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge. At the same time, I started freelance writing on the side. One thing I was never able to do as a newspaper editor was travel writing, my dream job, and my new flexibility allowed me to do that.

Both experiences inspired me to write “A Ghost of a Chance,” a story about a newspaper reporter named Viola Valentine who ends up on her roof after Katrina floods New Orleans and experiences an epiphany of sorts. She leaves her loveless marriage, unfulfilling job and overbearing family and follows her dream of becoming a travel writer. But the storm also blew open a psychic door. Now she sees ghosts who have died by water as a SCANC, a person who experiences “specific communication with apparitions, non-entities and the comatose.”

As Viola enters her new career as travel writer, solving mysteries that appear with apparitions everywhere she goes, the one person she hopes to speak to—her daughter who died of leukemia years before—continues to elude her.

Or does she?

The Viola Valentine paranormal mystery series continues; I have written eight in the series so far with the latest "Ghost Lights."

I think about what happened 20 years ago today when my hometown of New Orleans and my mother's hometown of Biloxi were battered by Hurricane Katrina. At the time, I kept telling myself that I would never get over the horror—and I haven’t. I won’t be watching commemorative news today or that documentary on Netflix. The pain remains.

            But as my character says in the first Viola Valentine mystery, there are blessings from Katrina. New Orleans is a new city. The Mississippi Gulf Coast bounced back like it had in 1969 when Hurricane Camille roared through (I remember that one vividly). More hurricanes have come and gone and we rebuild, we persevere.

Instead of thinking of what we lost, I'll remember this instead:

The boxes I received every day from friends around the country (see below).

The hundreds of volunteers who came in to help us gut and rebuild.

The phone calls, the emails, the care, the support.

I'm just one Louisianan, but we all thank you.