The Yellow House by Sarah Broom

This is a book that has two levels.  The first is that it is a memoir about the author's family, chronicling several generations of a family.  The other is that it is a book about New Orleans, and the changes that have occurred there and continue to occur there, starting with Hurricane Betsy and continuing up to present day times.
It is something the author was working on, a collection of stories and thoughts, about possibilities and the lack there of, and the neighborhoods that housed her family specifically and black families in general.
The author began the book long before Katrina, and was not triggered by Katrina.  While it’s impossible to underscore Hurricane Katrina’s impact on her family and the city at large, the story also reveals the ways in which Katrina was no singular catastrophe.  It was a catastrophe long in the making, a tipping point that caused a very fragile infrastructure to collapse on itself.  Fascinating and exhausting to read.