'The Year Before the Flood' is as much a story about author Ned Sublette's life as it is about New Orleans.

Sublette takes readers on an unexpected journey through the past and present, often melding the two in an inextricable and tantalizing way.

Split into three parts ("Nackatish," "The Year Before the Floods" and "Fast Dynamite, Slow Dynamite"), Sublette gives rich voice to race relations, class and politics -- all while interlacing his story with the driving beat of New Orleans blues, jazz, soul and hip-hop.

'Flood' distills, in real time, the ongoing contradictions of a society that is both rich and reviled.

At times loquacious, Sublette is fierce when presenting the complexities of a city he loves, and he takes caution in staying away from sheer oversimplification. If you want a slice of what New Orleans was like before the flood, read it here.

If you wondered what it was like in the murky in-between and thereafter, it is here. Sublette's passionate offering lives well beyond the page, and even after one's finished it, in one's heart.