They Called Us River Rats

The Last Batture Settlement of New Orleans

By: Macon Fry

Narrated by: Adam Barr

They Called Us River Rats: The Last Batture Settlement of New Orleans is the previously untold story of perhaps the oldest outsider settlement in America, an invisible community on the annually flooded shores of the Mississippi River. This community exists in the place between the normal high and low water line of the Mississippi River, a zone known in Louisiana as the batture.

Until now, the stories of this way of life have existed only in the memories of those who have lived here. They Called Us River Rats also explores the troubled relationship between people inside the levees, the often-reviled batture folks, and the river itself. It traces the struggle between batture folks and city authorities, the commercial interests that claimed the river, and Louisiana's most powerful politicians.

Today Fry is among the senior generation of "River Rats" living in a vestigial colony of 12 "camps" on New Orleans' river batture, a fragment of a settlement that once stretched nearly six miles and numbered hundreds of homes. It is the last riparian settlement on the Lower Mississippi and a contrarian, independent life outside urban zoning, planning, and flood protection. This book is for everyone who ever felt the pull of the Mississippi River or saw its towering levees and wondered who could live on the other side.

©2021 University Press of Mississippi (P)2022 Tantor

Enjoyable and interesting nonfiction

Great story about living on the batture in New Orleans now and back in time. Well written, well researched. Narrator was good but he mispronounced many words known to locals which was a shame. Otherwise, a great read.

great story and complex understanding of NOLA

great story and research is excellent

only fault, have a narrator qho.knows how to correctly pronounce local names, streets and districts

very good insight to local river scene along the batture

Passionate, engaging, and informative

Mr. Fry is a fascinating cat! This homage to batture life and history is truly engaging. Some of that history is sordid, though more (but not entirely) on the part of others than the batture-dwellers; some is heroic or just plain fun, in a Huck Finn kind of way; and generally it all rings true. Mr. Fry has glossed over some legitimate concerns of the levee districts and the Corps for protection of the levees, but I think out of passion rather than malice. This is a great book for anyone who lives in or knows or simply cares about New Orleans - and helpful to understanding why things are the way they are today in this unique city. Bissot’s successors are, as I write this, trying to create a development on Bissot-claimed property on the flood side of the levee - the irony of this is overwhelming, given what you will learn in this book. The narrator did a great job, and even pronounced almost everything correctly, which as any New Orleanian knows is no mean trick!

Reminded me of my own childhood.

Grew up on the Bayou in Southeast Texas, myself, and spent my summers in New Orleans less than a mile from these camps and never knew they existed! Excellent history of New Orleans politics, the Mississippi river, and life always finding a way.