When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun--a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four--chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the eerie days after the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and rescuing those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. His wife Kathy, a boisterous Southerner who converted to Islam, is left to make sense of the surreal atmosphere (in New Orleans and the United States generally) in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun was possible.