WHEN THE WIND TURNED

A KATRINA FAMILY STORY

Welcome to When the Wind Turned: A Katrina Family Story, a new serialized work from Heavy Crown Press. This is an exclusive weekly series (Wednesdays), available to paid subscribers, following one Louisiana family whose lives split apart—and then unexpectedly re-form—in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

This story is fiction, but the emotional landscape is rooted in lived experience: displacement, loved ones scattered across states, the ache of rebuilding, the quiet grief of what’s lost, the fierce hope in what’s found. Our goal is to create not only a narrative, but a space for profound conversations about trauma, recovery, climate change, environmental injustice, and what it means to be a refugee within your own country.

We hope you’ll read along with us, reflect with us, and join the dialogue as each chapter unfolds.

— Ashley Rovira & Griffin Wells, Heavy Crown Press/The Griffin Signal

Chapter One — Before the Breach

FRANCINE LEMOINE — AUGUST 30, 2005

The waterline is not what she remembers first.

It’s the silence.

A house should have sound, especially a house like hers — three teenagers, a dog, a mother who talks to herself when she cooks. But when Francine steps into the wreckage of her living room, nothing speaks. Not the warped floorboards, not the sagging drywall, not even the ruined piano that once held the shape of Sunday afternoons.

Silence settles like silt.

She stands just inside the doorway, one hand braced against it, the same gesture she made a hundred times before the storm. Except now the doorframe leans slightly, as though exhausted.

She thinks, This was our life. This was the place we kept it.

And then she forces herself to move.

Her shoes make soft sucking sounds on the wet floor as she crosses into the kitchen. The refrigerator lies on its side. A family calendar floats in a crusted pool of water — August 2005, marked with school schedules, Jacob’s shift at the art store, Noah’s math team meeting, Eve’s orthodontist appointment, the Start of School Mass.

Normal life, suspended in ink.

She remembers the Friday before the storm. Cooking red beans and rice because the kids would revolt if she didn’t. Jacob hovering by the stove trying to sneak tastes. Noah sitting at the table, doing algebra for fun, pencil tapping a rhythm. Eve, thirteen and restless, flipping through her planner and complaining about how none of her friends were evacuating.

They didn’t evacuate either.

Not because she didn’t want to — but because Jeremy stayed. And the kids stayed because he stayed. And Francine stayed because someone had to hold the center.

Now the center has given way.

She kneels. Picks up a framed photograph face-down in a puddle. It’s the five of them on the front porch last Thanksgiving. Jacob tall and lanky at seventeen. Noah in his glasses and serious expression. Eve with a braid over one shoulder, chin lifted like she could stare down the world.

Francine closes her eyes and tries not to cry.

There will be time for crying later.

Right now she needs to gather what she can.

She moves slowly up the stairs, each step groaning under her weight. The water didn’t reach the second floor, but the air smells wrong — sour drywall, mold beginning its quiet work.

She pushes open Jacob’s door.

His backpack sits on the desk where he left it. His Converse lie by the bed, soaked but salvageable. His computer is on the floor where she left it after searching for anything she could save.

The laptop survived.

She had turned it on earlier to see if any photos could be recovered.

Instead, she found the AIM logs.

And she hasn’t stopped thinking about them since.