Portail des médiathèques du réseau Paris-Saclay

Seventeen-year-old Wes Trench is working on a shrimp boat with his father, but as the shrimp get skinnier and grayer, his father gets angrier and meaner. Life was already grueling enough in the marshy expanse of land and bay known as the Barataria, just south of New Orleans. But the one-two punch of Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill has desperate residents settling their losses for a check of $1, 500 from BP, a sum that will barely last three months.