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Five Days At Memorial is a reconstruction of the time following Hurricane Katrina that survivors spent at the hospital, largely without electricity and with decreasing supplies of food and water. Horrific mismanagement led to a situation so desperate and chaotic that later some doctors and nurses were accused of having euthanized some of their patients. The second half of the book deals with the investigation and trials following that accusation.

The first thing the author did right was pick a captivating, if horrifying, story to tell. This book was intense! Everyone was constantly making tough decisions. Sometimes I wanted to scream I was so frustrated by administrators who were obviously (in hindsight) making very poor decisions. At other times I was deeply moved by people’s compassion. Even the second half, detailing the investigation and trials, was emotionally engaging because of the number of people whose lives were going to be affected by the outcome.

I think the main reason this story had such an impact was because the author did such a great job making people come to life for me. The primary focus of the story was on only a few of the many individuals trapped at Memorial. This made it easier to keep track of who was who and what was going on. However, even characters who were mentioned tangentially were often fleshed out with some small details about their personal life. I was very impressed by the author’s ability to share just enough to make me remember that these “secondary characters” were real people without distracting from her main narrative. Given the emotional impact of the story, the ending felt like a bit of a let down, but I think that’s simply one danger of telling a true story. Not everything always works out in a satisfying, this is the end of the narrative kind of way in real life.

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Now, this opinion could be biased by the fact that I saw the movie first, but I also was very happy with what they chose to show in the movie. They do compress the time period over which events take place, but it is still clear that the king’s improvement takes a lot of time and hard work. The best, most moving lines from the book were almost all faithfully reproduced in the movie. My only small complaint is that I think the movie overdramatized the bad points of the king’s relationship with his father and brother. From the sounds of the book, these relationships were pretty good by the time period in which the events of the movie take place. That said, a little drama never hurt a movie and I was quite impressed by how exciting the movie was given the low-key nature of the events portrayed. I would definitely recommend seeing this very well done movie and might even recommend seeing it before the book or listening to the audiobook so that you get to hear the king speak.

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