When Hurricane Katrina smashes New Orleans, the hopes of the Ninth Ward fall on an old man, his dog and an antiquated steam-powered pumping station.
John Bailey is an old southern man dying of cancer. He’s never taken any risks in life, and even worked the same job for the New Orleans water department for over fifty years. When he hears about Hurricane Katrina, he suspects it might be bad, possibly overloading the intricate protections the city has built over the years.
But nobody wants to listen.
So he hatches a scheme to secretly transform Old Number Seven, a coal-fired pumping station built along the Industrial Canal in 1925, from a museum back into a fully working facility. Sitting in the middle of the city’s neglected Lower Ninth Ward, Old Number Seven could become the only protection people living there will have during the storm.
The goal of the Old Number Seven novel is to raise awareness of the ongoing struggles of the people of New Orleans, and to raise money for continued relief efforts.