New Orleans, August through November, 2005

The novel takes place in the days before and months following Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The city has been destroyed by the storm itself and the flooding consequent breached levees, as well as by Hurricane Rita, which made landfall less than a month after Katrina. The devastation continues to appall, sicken, and grieve the city’s inhabitants. As Tess observes, “The flood itself had been straight out of an apocalypse movie, but the aftermath was something else. The innards of sofas strewn across lawns. Cars belly up in the streets. An inch-thick crust of sewage on every goddamned thing. You almost wanted the water to come back” (30).

New York City

Where Tess and Joe meet, where Del attends college and then works. New York stands in for the American North, as opposed to the American South; both Joe and Del see living...