The Floating World: A Novel

· Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Christa Lewis
Audiobook
13 hr 31 min
Unabridged
Eligible
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About this audiobook

A dazzling debut about family, home, and grief, The Floating World takes listeners into the heart of Hurricane Katrina with the story of the Boisdorés, whose roots stretch back nearly to the foundation of New Orleans. Though the storm is fast approaching the Louisiana coast, Cora, the family's fragile elder daughter, refuses to leave the city, forcing her parents, Joe Boisdoré, an artist descended from a freed slave who became one of the city's preeminent furniture makers, and his white “Uptown” wife, Dr. Tess Eshleman, to evacuate without her, setting off a chain of events that leaves their marriage in shambles and Cora catatonic—the victim or perpetrator of some violence mysterious even to herself.



This mystery is at the center of C. Morgan Babst's haunting, lyrical novel. Cora's sister, Del, returns to New Orleans from the life she has tried to build in New York City to find her hometown in ruins and her family deeply alienated from one another. As Del attempts to figure out what happened to her sister, she must also reckon with the racial history of the city, and the trauma of destruction that was not, in fact, some random act of God, but an avoidable tragedy visited upon New Orleans's most helpless and forgotten citizens.

About the author

C. Morgan Babst was born and raised in New Orleans. She and her family evacuated New Orleans one day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. At a Katrina benefit in Manhattan, she met a fellow New Orleanian and married him. Eleven years later, she returned home to New Orleans with her husband and young daughter.

The narrator of over 100 audiobooks, Christa Lewis has been nominated for an Audie Award and earned multiple Earphones Awards for recordings that have become Audible bestsellers. Christa is a classically trained actress and graduate of Boston University's actor training program.

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