"Utterly original...A very charming novel with an element of sweetness tempered by humor and occasional silliness...To say that Buddy Zooka will stand out on the shelves is an understatement." -Bookslut Buddy Zooka brings the French Quarter to life like no one since Ignatius Reilly. In fact, if A Confederacy of Dunces were written by Lewis Carroll, Buddy would appear. Buddy is a happy-go-lucky musician in the French Quarter until one day he goes fishing and catches an alligator, Mardi Gator, who quickly decides to take up residence in Buddy’s hat. Thrown off his usual carefree routine, Buddy loses his smile and starts to contemplate his world. Buddy’s journey turns spiritual as faith healers show him how man has been degrading his environment and how the secret to our salvation resides within each one of us. Buddy’s story is at turns zany and contemplative, and the lesson learned is a profound one that resonates in New Orleans like nowhere else.Buddy Zooka is targeted at readers of middle-school level and up. Tracey Tangerine, a.k.a. Tracey Davis, is an art teacher in New Orleans’ public high schools and a native of the city. She wrote this fantastic tale while in exile from Hurricane Katrina in Portland, Oregon. She directs a musical version of Buddy’s story with New Orleans students each Earth Day. One of her highlights, she said, was walking through the halls of a strange high school and hearing a student singing a tune from the play.

Buddy Zooka: In the French Quarter and Beyond

Children's Books

Tangerine, Tracey

Animals

Broken Levee Books

Praise for Home, Away: "This is a charming tale filled with sounds, scenes, and sensibilities that are real and vivid. Fatherhood, childhood, baseball, and marriage are all portrayed with profound and moving truthfulness."--Mario M. Cuomo, former governor of New York "Inspiring, outrageous, soaring, devastating. Anyone who's ever played baseball or watched it, anyone who's ever been a father or had one, is in for a treat."--Mike Farrell, actor (M*A*S*H, Providence) and author of Just Call Me Mike How much is a father's love worth? Jason Thibodeaux has a $42 million contract to pitch for the Colorado Rockies and a romantic bachelor lifestyle when the son he lost in a searing custody battle reappears in his life. Home, Away follows Thibodeaux's colorful rise to the pinnacle of Major League Baseball and his agonized decision to quit in the prime of his career to care for his troubled son. Their evolving relationship and resulting confrontations--on the baseball field and off--test the limits of loyalty and the meaning of fatherhood itself.

Home, Away

Literature & Fiction

Gillenkirk, Jeff

United States

"Where We Know creates a mosaic of the ultimate mosaic city...these writers illuminate the city's past and the present in a gritty homage fit for natives and foreigners alike. Designed as though Chin Music Press/Broken Levee Books intends to singlehandedly resurrect the art of bookmaking, Where We Know is a book you'll want at your bedside and on your coffee table." —Lucia Silva, NPR "Rutledge (English, Univ. of New Orleans) shows himself, in an introduction both touching and sincere, to understand fully the city and its struggles, to love New Orleans for what it is and what it can be, what it means both to those who decided to stay and those who left." —Library Journal "Where We Know is a must for anyone who wants a more excellent understanding of the tenacity of the people of New Orleans." —The Midwest Book Review Five years after Katrina, New Orleans is still limping. This second book of a planned trilogy looks at both those who stayed on and rebuilt their lives in New Orleans and those who had to say goodbye. It also weaves in historical references and quotes from Louis Armstrong, Lafcadio Hearn, and many others. What emerges is a book that shows how lovers of New Orleans have always battled with its darker side, and how the people's knack for celebrating an impromptu second line goes hand in hand with their acknowledgment of the ghosts in their midst.

Where We Know: New Orleans As Home

"Like a mournful fairytale, Jennifer Shaw’s beautifully staged tableaux are alternately sweet and menacing, filled with emotion but never spilling over into sentimentality. The poetic marriage of words and photos makes Hurricane Story a children’s book for grown-ups.” Josh Neufeld, creator of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge"Even if you think you've seen it all where Katrina's concerned, trust me, you're going to love Shaw's marvelous memoir."The Times-Picayune"This is the kind of book that reminds you that books can be beautiful objects." The Los Angeles Times"Hurricane Story is a tabletop, toy box Odyssey. With simple objects, trenchant statements, and exquisite camera vision, Shaw relates an epic tale of displacement, creation and discovery."  George Slade, curator, Photographic Resource Center, Boston"An engaging variation on a near mythic theme."Gambit WeeklyHurricane Story is a spellbinding odyssey of exile, birth and return told in forty-six photographs and simple, understated prose. This first-person narrative told through dreamlike images of toys and dolls chronicles one couple’s evacuation from New Orleans ahead of the broken levees, the birth of their first child on the day that Katrina made landfall, and their eventual return to the city as a family. Shaw’s photographs, at turns humorous and haunting, contrast deftly with the prose.This clothbound hardcover edition includes an introduction by Rob Walker, author of Letters From New Orleans and former Consumed” columnist for The New York Times Magazine.

Hurricane Story

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

"So lovely to look at, so pleasant to hold, with a bit of intrigue or insight on every page."—The Times-Picayune
This book of essays and art was compiled in the fall of 2005 while the writers were living in exile and watching their city drown. This lovingly designed paperback edition opens with a line of cars leaving New Orleans ahead of Hurricane Katrina and ends in a mad Mardi Gras romp.
The anthology, structured like a jazz funeral, includes essays by Jason Berry and Toni McGee Causey as well as reproductions of ninteenth century prints of the city.

Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?

History & Criticism

"Does anyone else smell beignets?"Tom Varisco documents the French Quarter's Jackson Square with funny, surprising, and sometimes shocking images and essays. Even the statue of Old Hickory weighs in with some colorful art criticism and an ode to the Who Dat nation. The book is an irreverent celebration of one of America's most famous destinations.Tom Varisco is the creator of Spoiled, a photo book of Hurricane Katrina refrigerator art, and Signs of New Orleans, a record of the city's colorful street signs.John Biguenet has published seven books, including the novel Oyster and The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories.

Jackson Squared: The Heart of the Quarter

"Rozek's [work] is antimedia media, almost disorienting in its simplicity."—Wired magazineLynzsea Sky, a twenty-something college student, tells the author her heartbreaking, disturbing, and culture-challenging life story. She speaks at first hesitantly, then with increasing clarity about sex, drugs, family life, education, tattoos, homelessness, her dreams of becoming a filmmaker, her brother's time in prison, and her mother's struggle with mental illness.The book is just the conversation; the absence of anything else makes this a groundbreaking new form of nonfiction. The lean prose is void of stylistic hijinks, drawing the reader in without drawing attention to the writer.The author's first book is part of a planned series called American True Stories, all of which will be similarly dialogue based. Michael Rozek's work illuminates real American lives and gives a voice to people who often are overlooked by the mainstream media.Michael Rozek has written more than two thousand articles for various national magazines including Rolling Stone, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, and The Village Voice in a career spanning nearly forty years. He walked away from a lucrative free-lance career to publish the popular Rozek's Newsletter in the 1990s in response to the "fast food" journalism he saw increasingly creeping into American magazines. For more than a decade, Rozek and his wife Charlotte have struggled with homelessness and poverty, yet Rozek continues to talk to and write about everyday Americans with empathy and insight. This is his first book.

Lynzsea Sky: An American True Story (American True Stories)

Biographies & Memoirs

Rozek, Michael

Community & Culture

"School Board is a total joy to read, as full of sass and subversive brass as its 18-year-old hero, the political neophyte and Houston school board candidate Tucker 'Catfish' Davis ... I hope School Board is the first of many more to come from this gifted young writer."-Ben Fountain, author of National Book Critics Circle Award winner Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Brief Encounters with Che Guevara Into the riotous cavalcade of great American literary characters tumbles a new class clown, Tucker 'Catfish' Davis, high school senior and aspiring politician. One part Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces, one part Hazel Motes from Wise Blood, and several parts Willie Stark from All the King's Men, Catfish Davis is a singular presence on the page. Mike Freedman hasn't just written the funniest book about a school board election, he's written the kind of David-and-Goliath story that gets all of us 'little people' cheering and laughing in equal measure.”-David Abrams, author of Fobbit Houston, Texas, 1999. Enter Tucker "Catfish" Davis, a high school senior with high-flying political ambitions as the self-proclaimed heir to populist Louisiana Governors Huey and Earl Long. Armed with idealism and a fedora, he embarks on a quixotic campaign to get elected to the local school board in an effort to help the "little people" of Houston. In the wild days that follow, Catfish's long-shot bid gains traction through guerilla campaigning against a questionable tax deal supported by his opponent, a powerful executive at an Enron-esque energy company. With the help of his classmates, an indicted Louisiana governor, a gay journalist with nascent mayoral ambitions and an ex-Green Beret trained to wage unconventional warfare, Catfish makes it a race Houston will never forget. Based on an actual 1999 news story, School Board is an entertaining but satirical debut novel that revels in the diversity, madness and absurdities of the Bayou City.

School Board

Freedman, Mike

Humor & Satire

"School Board is a total joy to read, as full of sass and subversive brass as its 18-year-old hero, the political neophyte and Houston school board candidate Tucker 'Catfish' Davis ... I hope School Board is the first of many more to come from this gifted young writer."-Ben Fountain, author of National Book Critics Circle Award winner Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Brief Encounters with Che Guevara Into the riotous cavalcade of great American literary characters tumbles a new class clown, Tucker 'Catfish' Davis, high school senior and aspiring politician. One part Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces, one part Hazel Motes from Wise Blood, and several parts Willie Stark from All the King's Men, Catfish Davis is a singular presence on the page. Mike Freedman hasn't just written the funniest book about a school board election, he's written the kind of David-and-Goliath story that gets all of us 'little people' cheering and laughing in equal measure.”-David Abrams, author of Fobbit Houston, Texas, 1999. Enter Tucker "Catfish" Davis, a high school senior with high-flying political ambitions as the self-proclaimed heir to populist Louisiana Governors Huey and Earl Long. Armed with idealism and a fedora, he embarks on a quixotic campaign to get elected to the local school board in an effort to help the "little people" of Houston. In the wild days that follow, Catfish's long-shot bid gains traction through guerilla campaigning against a questionable tax deal supported by his opponent, a powerful executive at an Enron-esque energy company. With the help of his classmates, an indicted Louisiana governor, a gay journalist with nascent mayoral ambitions and an ex-Green Beret trained to wage unconventional warfare, Catfish makes it a race Houston will never forget. Based on an actual 1999 news story, School Board is an entertaining but satirical debut novel that revels in the diversity, madness and absurdities of the Bayou City.

Christmas Eve in Vacherie, Louisiana, finds the banks of the Mississippi alive with fire. Walter is consumed with planning the perfect bonfire—the one that will finally beat his brother's blaze and extinguish the lingering melancholy from his father's death. As Walter obsesses over wood, kindling, and structure, his family life teeters on the brink of collapse.Elizabeth Sanders' fiction has appeared in the Arkansas Review, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, and the anthology Something in the Water. She is from New Orleans and lives in New York with her husband and daughter. This is her first novel.

The Last Light

Sanders, Elizabeth

Literary

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Books by Broken Levee Books

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Broken Levee Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Buddy Zooka: In the French Quarter and Beyond

Home, Away

Where We Know: New Orleans As Home

Hurricane Story

Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?

Jackson Squared: The Heart of the Quarter

Lynzsea Sky: An American True Story (American True Stories)

School Board

School Board

The Last Light