“Words Alone Are Certain Good” by Trenton McKay Judson

“You can dance in a hurricane, but only if you’re standing in the eye,” sings Brandi Carlile. No one was dancing in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. In Words Alone Are Certain Good (Pen & Leaf Press, 2025), Trenton Judson writes of characters paddling, swimming, crawling, clinging, but rarely dancing, during the storm and its aftermath—at least not in protagonist Ernest’s neighborhood.

Judson captures the horrors experienced by those unaware, or unable to be prepared, before the storm arrives.  Whether due to finances (Katrina hit at the end of the month, a day before government benefits were to be distributed), or lack of work, or mental or physical health issues—the list is endless—options for safety and survival were few for the poor of New Orleans. As the storm raged, options for survival decreased. He weaves together a tattered tapestry of Katrina’s wrath, and the wrath that lives inside each of us.

Words Alone Are Certain Good smells. It smells awful – the stench of dead bodies and sewerage in the river and streets, the gagging odor of liquor and sweat, the filth of the Super Dome. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that so vividly brings smells to life.

Words Alone Are Certain Good haunts. The dynamics among Ernest’s family – his developmentally-challenged brother, alcoholic his mother, his mentally ill wife, even his absent father – shift like rowboats tossed in an angry river. Ernest and his family, one by one, must confront both the real and metaphoric hurricanes into which their lives are tossed.

Trenton McKay Judson

Now, looking back at those early days of Hurricane Katrina, and having survived many storms in the coastal area in which I live, I can see what is one of Judson’s points—we survive, maybe even thrive after, a hurricane. But the storm never ends. It becomes a part of who we are.

Judson is an East Texas-based author and this is his debut novel.