Born Liars

The only time Americans had been in war was 150 years ago in the wake of the Civil War. Throughout the South were burnt and blasted cities and a small knots of people sharing a struggle to explain what had befallen them and to keep themselves and each other alive. Americans don’t have much patience for history, their own or anyone else’s, and events a century and a half old would be as impersonal and distant as the aftermath of the Second World War in Europe. I believe that the people of New York, having recently experienced the dislocation to their lives of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, might recall the horrific images they saw over and over of the effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.

Born Liars begins there, in the Superdome as Katrina is about to release its full fury. People are terrified and threatening to turn on each other in an ugly mob. Frank Carruthers attempts to defuse the situation by reminding them of the resilient people from whom they are descended from.