The Hurricanes: One High School Team's Homecoming After Katrina »

Jeré Longman, a sportswriter for The New York Times who has written about sports for over thirty years, grew up on the Cajun prairie in Eunice, Louisiana. Jeré is the author of the New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back, The Girls of Summer, and If Football’s a Religion, Then Why Don’t We Have a Prayer? He lives in Philadelphia.

From a New York Times reporter and bestselling author: a stirring account of a high school football team’s championship quest in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Before Hurricane Katrina hit, Cyril Crutchfield Jr. decided to stay in lower Plaquemines Parish, a peninsula south of New Orleans that had about half of the Gulf's oil supply coming through it as well as hundreds of millions of pounds of shrimp, crabs, and oysters annually. The state championship–winning high school football coach clearly had no idea what he was in for, fearing for his life as the water rose quickly up the gym bleachers he sat atop and the windows blew out. He managed to catch his championship trophy when it was floating by. "If it was a choice between saving a person and the state championship trophy, it was a no-brainer. I was saving that trophy," Crutchfield told Longman. When the storm was over, his part of the parish was devastated. One bit of stability people learned to look for throughout the region was high school football. Jeré Longman, a sportswriter for The New York Times who wrote the bestselling Among the Heroes: United Flight 93, grew up less than 200 miles northwest of New Orleans, in Cajun country. Here he carefully chronicles the story of Crutchfield and many of the players on his new team, the defiantly named Hurricanes -- a combination of three high school teams from the parish -- as they battle toward a state championship. From incredible lows (recruitment violations were committed in the hours after the storm by rival high schools) to the reunion atmosphere of Hurricane games as people returned to the region, Longman's story is way more than one about football. It's a fascinating microcosm of the overarching Katrina story with a twist: Poverty may be a cycle that many Americans can't find their way out of, but hope can be found in all sorts of places, including a high school football game. --Mark J. Miller

Storm Warning     1
A Tide of Extraordinary Circumstances     22
A New School Opens     40
A Chance to Equal Our Strife     58
"Son of a Gun, We'll Have Big Fun on the Bayou"     77
"Call Everybody! Call the White House!"     96
"They Can't Call Us Paper Champions Anymore"     105
A Chain's as Strong as Its Weakest Link     110
"I Can't Sit. I've Got to Play."     125
"Like Pit Bulls on a Fresh Pack of Pork Chops"     137
"Like Chasing a Ghost"     147
"If There Was a Time to Live, It's Now"     163
"Like the Storm Keeps Happening Over and Over"     173
"Nothingness Builds Bridges to Nowhere"     180
A Coach Suspended, a Player Hurt     193
"I'd Rather Them Do Anything But This."     200
Bloody Mary     214
Controlled Rage     225
"How 'Bout Them Cowboys!"     237
Life on the Half Shell     252
"Knock Somebody Out!"     271
An Opponent Named Desire     282
Crutch in the Hole     299
Big Stage Right There     316
Epilogue     333
Acknowledgments     343
Bibliography     347
Index     349