We Dream of Water: A Novel

In the years following Hurricane Katrina, far from the manicured architecture and walking tours of touristed New Orleans, Jimmy Petrovich lingers, trapped by dead-end jobs, addiction, and self-abuse. The city is rebuilding, but its identity, like its people, has collapsed.

Jimmy finds hope in Ron Dan—journalist, playboy, entrepreneur. Dan offers Jimmy work as a private investigator—his latest project is a biography of Walter "Mongoose" Johns, a legendary saxophone player, about whom no one seems to know anything—but Johns isn't interested in Dan, or his journalism. Dan needs somebody who can get to Johns, somebody the man might pity even more than himself.

But Jimmy's investigation leads him into an inverted world of artificial biographies, conspiracies, and identities in flux. He discovers there can be no solace. Not the women. Not the booze. Not the collateral damage that follows him like a lingering storm.

Dark, brutal, and evocative, We Dream of Water examines the unpublicized damage of one of America's worst natural disasters. Smajic has reinvented the literary noir genre and is sure to be heralded as a striking new voice in American fiction.