Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a painting contractor from New Orleans who sent his family to safety while he stayed behind to attend to his properties when the Katrina warnings were issued. He survived the deluge and with a few friends and a canoe and small row boat searched the flooded city for stranded neighbors and animals. In appreciation, he was arrested, imprisoned and denied even a phone call to his family. The description of the Katrina damage is horrific. The violation of Zeitoun's human rights is worse. Six years later New Orleans has done a great deal to heal the visible scars of Katrina. The realization that the rule of law can be so easily ignored is not so easily fixed. I began reading this book thinking it was a work of fiction based on real events and finished knowing it was real events that I wished were fiction.