They Called Us River Rats

The Last Batture Settlement of New Orleans

De: Macon Fry

Narrado por: Adam Barr

Duración: 7 h y 27 m

Resumen del Editor

They Called Us River Rats: The Last Batture Settlement of New Orleans is the previously untold story of perhaps the oldest outsider settlement in America, an invisible community on the annually flooded shores of the Mississippi River. This community exists in the place between the normal high and low water line of the Mississippi River, a zone known in Louisiana as the batture.

Until now, the stories of this way of life have existed only in the memories of those who have lived here. They Called Us River Rats also explores the troubled relationship between people inside the levees, the often-reviled batture folks, and the river itself. It traces the struggle between batture folks and city authorities, the commercial interests that claimed the river, and Louisiana's most powerful politicians.

Today Fry is among the senior generation of "River Rats" living in a vestigial colony of 12 "camps" on New Orleans' river batture, a fragment of a settlement that once stretched nearly six miles and numbered hundreds of homes. It is the last riparian settlement on the Lower Mississippi and a contrarian, independent life outside urban zoning, planning, and flood protection. This book is for everyone who ever felt the pull of the Mississippi River or saw its towering levees and wondered who could live on the other side.

©2021 University Press of Mississippi (P)2022 Tantor

great story and complex understanding of NOLA

great story and research is excellent

only fault, have a narrator qho.knows how to correctly pronounce local names, streets and districts

very good insight to local river scene along the batture

Enjoyable and interesting nonfiction

Great story about living on the batture in New Orleans now and back in time. Well written, well researched. Narrator was good but he mispronounced many words known to locals which was a shame. Otherwise, a great read.