Tales from a haunted city

While reporting on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Dan Baum started pondering a complex question: Why were New Orleans residents so devoted to their city, one of the most corrupt and poverty-stricken in the United States?

Baum's new book "Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans," tries to answer that question by telling the stories of nine New Orleans residents both before and after Katrina upended their lives. And for the most part, it succeeds.

Other books — notably Douglas Brinkley's "The Great Deluge" — have focused on the political and racial divides that contributed to the government's inept response to Katrina. Baum doesn't ignore those themes, but he allows them to emerge naturally from his stories instead of overplaying them.

He introduces us to nine memorable people, including Dr. Frank Minyard, the Orleans Parish coroner who acts as the book's moral center; John Guidos Jr., who becomes JoAnn the transsexual barkeeper; Tim Bruneau, a cop who gets caught up in some of Katrina's most horrifying scenes; and Billy Grace, an ambitious attorney who occupies a precarious spot among the city's elite.

The result: A "Nashville"-style collage that dramatizes Baum's theory that these characters could thrive only in New Orleans.

The constant cross-cutting from character to character is a little distracting at first, and it robs the book of some of its momentum. But this approach has its rewards, as Baum creates a series of fine-grained portraits that lodge themselves in the reader's memory.

As he follows them through their everday lives -- births, marriages, scandals and deaths — Baum creates a unique social history of a town like nowhere else.

The author's strategy pays off in full when Hurricane Katrina roars into town, about two-thirds of the way through the book. At that point, we're ready to follow Baum's people anywhere -- even into the heart of the disaster and beyond.

Through these characters' eyes, we get an intimate glimpse of the city that nurtured them. Better yet, we understand the depth of their attachment to New Orleans, even when Katrina turns it upside down.