A MEMOIR · NEW ORLEANS · AUGUST 2005
An Inmate Story
A first-person account of surviving one of America’s defining disasters from inside Orleans Parish Prison — where evacuation was not a decision an inmate could make for himself.
First-person testimony from inside the storm.
PROLOGUE · AUGUST 27, 2005
Inside Orleans Parish Prison, leaving was not an individual choice.
Many Katrina stories begin with movement: packing, driving, boarding buses, searching for higher ground. Gerard’s account begins inside confinement.
02 / TIMELINE
This is the timeline everyone else lived through from the outside. Scroll to see it from the inside.
August 27, 2005
The city empties. Buses, cars, families with somewhere to run. Not everyone had that option.
August 29, 2005
Katrina hits the Gulf Coast. Behind bars, there’s no shutter to board, no car to load — just walls and whatever comes next.
The levees fail
Eighty percent of the city floods. Inside, the water doesn’t ask who’s guilty and who isn’t.
Days later
Rescue boats moved through neighborhoods. This is the story of surviving a disaster while freedom of movement remained in someone else’s hands.
He knew he couldn’t leave.
THE SAME DISASTER · TWO REALITIES
OUTSIDE
Higher ground. Roads. Boats. Buses. Waiting. Across New Orleans, movement was difficult, dangerous, and uncertain. For some, it was impossible. Outside the jail, people could still try to seek safety.
INSIDE
Gerard could not choose higher ground, search for transportation, or leave the path of the storm on his own. His safety depended on the institution holding him.
ORLEANS PARISH PRISON
DISPLACEMENT
But water was only part of the story.
THE BOOK’S POINT OF VIEW
A Journey Through Hurricane Katrina: An Inmate Story is a firsthand account of the disaster from inside incarceration — where movement was controlled, evacuation was not a personal decision, and survival depended on the institution holding him.
This is more than a hurricane story. It is a story about what happens when disaster reaches people whose freedom, safety, and movement are already in someone else’s hands.
TESTIMONY
Hear Gerard tell the story in his own words through interviews, readings, conversations, and archival material.
PRESS · REVIEWS · CONVERSATIONS
Coverage, reviews, interviews, and public conversations will be collected here as they are published.
READ THE FULL STORY
An Inmate Story
A firsthand memoir of Hurricane Katrina from inside Orleans Parish Prison — an account of confinement, institutional dependence, survival, and New Orleans during one of the defining disasters in American history.