Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

This book read less like a standard work of nonfiction than a very long magazine article or "This American Life" segment. Eggers tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a quiet, respectable house painter who decides to stay behind in New Orleans when his wife and children flee from Hurricane Katrina. For the first few days he's invigorated- gloating to his wife how serene the city is while she crawls through traffic to Baton Rouge with antsy kids and a flatulent dog; then paddling through the streets in his canoe giving help where he can. But like the water covering the city, things start turning dark and dirty. He's arrested in one of his own properties and brought to a nightmarish holding facility where he's told he's suspected of hatching a terrorist plot. He's given no chance to call his wife; and the account of her emotional turmoil in the week before he's able to contact her through a helpful missionary is nearly as harrowing as the appalling conditions in Zeitoun's prison- a prison, he realizes, that was constructed immediately after the storm at great expense of human and material resources while law-abiding citizens went without food, shelter, or rescue. The horrors of Zeitoun's imprisonment, and of what happened to the city itself, are softened by the sections of the book that describe the Zeitouns' loving family and the happy life they had built from humble beginnings. But the theme, one that Zeitoun repeats to himself in prison, is unquestionably troubling- how could this have happened in America?