April 17, 2023
Essayist Fields’s evocative debut explores the development of his native Houston, Tex., against the backdrop of the many storms that have inundated America’s fourth-largest city. When Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, Fields’s complicated feelings and “illogical love” for his hometown came rushing back as he set out from Iowa to rescue his mother. Noting that Houston was “gouged out from the sucking bowl of a swamp,” Fields traces the city’s evolution from a slavery-dependent agricultural economy to the hub of the U.S. oil and gas industry, highlighting how its lack of zoning and laissez-faire approach to regulations has led to its current environmental problems, including floods, chemical leaks, and air pollution. However, Houston’s “anything goes” attitude about land use has also made it a welcoming and affordable mecca for “the nation’s highest concentrations of immigrants from Vietnam, Pakistan and several other countries.” Fields also profiles noteworthy locals including oil heiress Dominique de Menil, who built a public art sanctuary in the center of the city in the 1970s; self-taught abstract painter and fisherman Forrest Bess; and air monitor Juan Flores, who leads “toxic tours” through Houston’s petrochemical corridor. The result is a vibrant, multilayered portrait of a city full of contradictions.