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Imagine living near the epicenter of the most important story of 2005—Hurricane Katrina—but having hardly a clue about the human suffering and devastation mere blocks away.

That was Joshua Clark, a 32-year-old New Orleans writer and publisher who rode out the storm in his French Quarter apartment and remained in the city for months afterwards. Clark describes the surreal experience in his memoir, Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone.

With little access to media reports, for days Clark and a motley group of French Quarter denizens remained unaware of the death and misery that washed over the city as the floodwaters rose. “Besides some big puddles,” he writes of their early excursions from the Quarter, “there was no flooding anywhere we could see.”

Clark and his neighbors did what they could as they began to appreciate the tragedy’s epic dimensions. “All there was to do was to survive in the now,” Clark argues in the book, “to make sure those close around you were surviving, and to try to keep smiling to soothe the frustration that we did not know how we could help those who needed it, and that we were not helping them.” So they guzzled all the booze within reach, scavenged for food and, in between, set to work cleaning up the Quarter.

At first they called themselves “The Krewe of Nagin” after New Orleans’ mayor, but they soon decided on political neutrality. Clark settles on the label “Jesus Swept,” explaining, “We figured it was what Jesus would do if he were here—sweep.”

Actually, Jesus would have probably walked on water and rescued people from their roofs—but, as Clark reiterates in an interview, at first he had only the slightest inkling of the unfolding human tragedy. “It killed me, the lack of info,” he says. “I wish we’d had a boat.”

Besides a broom, Clark also had a tape recorder, which he put to good use in the subsequent weeks and months. As the floodwaters receded, Clark explored the city and the region, interviewing dozens of survivors and compiling hundreds of hours of interviews in New Orleans, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, and the tiny Jefferson Parish town of Lafitte.

His book grew into far more than the oral history he first set out to produce. Clark’s lyrical, intensely personal reconstruction of the days and weeks after Katrina, and his ability to imbue it with deeper, almost-spiritual meaning, is as impressive as his sometimes-blithe, alcohol-soaked odyssey is disturbing. By the end of the book, one wonders if the author’s liver might have qualified for FEMA assistance.

But it turns out that a flood of liquor and beer is often what keeps his story afloat. That’s because it’s often in French Quarter bars and over shared bottles of wine that Clark demonstrates a remarkable ability to befriend and connect with an impressive variety of fascinating, resilient individuals struggling to reassemble their shattered lives.

In telling these intimate, poignant stories—intertwined with the story of his own survival and the gradual disintegration of his relationship with his girlfriend—Clark has produced a singular work. Other authors have ably described the larger human tragedy or the political struggles during and after the storm. Clark shows us Katrina and its aftermath from a gritty personal perspective.

To his credit, Clark doesn’t pity his characters. He shares their struggles and fears, honors their resolve and celebrates their sense of humor.

A native of Washington, D.C., Clark is now completely in love with his adopted hometown. “It never crossed my mind to leave [as Katrina approached],” he says. “I don’t know if I was too weak with love of the place to leave.”

What if another storm like Katrina bears down on his beloved city? “I’m definitely staying,” he declares without hesitation. “I’m never leaving.”