Chris Rose is a columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, an essayist for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and a frequent commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition. In 2006, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in recognition of his Katrina columns and was awarded a share in the Times-Picayune staff's Pulitzer for Public Service. Rose lives in New Orleans with his three children.
THE STORY
1 Dead in Attic is a collection of stories by Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, recounting the first harrowing year and a half of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Celebrated as a local treasure and heaped with national praise, Rose provides a rollercoaster ride of observation, commentary, emotion, tragedy, and even humor — in a way that only he could find in a devastated wasteland. They are stories of the dead and the living, stories of survivors and believers, stories of hope and despair. And stories about refrigerators.
1 Dead in Attic freeze-frames New Orleans, caught between an old era and a new, during its most desperate time, as it struggles out of the floodwaters and wills itself back to life.
“This book is dedicated to the memory of Thomas Coleman.
He was a retired longshoreman, a storyteller, a guy who liked to spend time with family and friends.
A New Orleanian.
He was 80 years old when he died in his attic at 2214 St. Roch Avenue, in the 8th Ward, on or about Aug. 29, 2005. He had a can of juice and a bedspread at his side when the waters rose.
There were more than a thousand like him.”
:: original dedication to 1 Dead in Attic, 2005 edition:
