started reading all these narratives. The scene where Evangeline comes online to nola.com, I did that. You know, things like “Has anyone been down such-and-such-avenue?” and “Oh, I’ve been down there and this happened.” I just listened to what people were saying was happening. That’s where the idea came for telling a smaller story. You know, what we saw on TV was looting and riots and all the really dramatic stuff, but what was really happening beneath the surface was all these smaller, less dramatic tragedies.
SRJ: I was wondering where Evangeline’s voice came from. There are so many voices to enter into from that whole situation. Why Evangeline’s?
JOS: I honestly don’t know where her voice came from. That’s one of the mysteries. I write in scenes. I get a snippet of dialogue and I write a scene around it. Then, I connect the scenes and figure out what’s happening based on that. The process of writing this book came from my interest in Hurricane Katrina. I always knew it was going to be a teenager’s voice telling the story though. I mean, it happened right at the beginning of the school year. People had either been to school for about a day, or hadn’t been to school yet, so thinking about that as a kid, how traumatic that would be, that your school doesn’t exist anymore and then you’re in some place that you’ve never heard of before.