As journalist Dan Baum covered Hurricane Katrina for The New Yorker, he wondered what sustained New Orleans residents' devotion to a city that -- with or without a storm -- has been so down on its luck. His new book, Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans, answers that question with the stories of nine people's lives in New Orleans over a 40-year span, bookended by Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and Katrina in 2005.

Here, in an excerpt from Baum's book, three different people recall life the city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

-- The Editors

Frank Minyard
September 2005