Hope Against Hope

Three Schools, One City, and the Struggle to Educate America's Children

By: Sarah Carr

Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie

Geraldlynn is a lively, astute 14-year-old. Her family, displaced by Hurricane Katrina, returns home to find a radically altered public education system. Geraldlynn's parents hope their daughter's new school will prepare her for college - but the teenager has ideals and ambitions of her own.

Aidan is a fresh-faced Harvard grad drawn to New Orleans by the possibility of bringing change to a flood-ravaged city. He teaches at an ambitious charter school with a group of newcomers determined to show the world they can use science, data, and hard work to build a model school.

Mary Laurie is a veteran educator who becomes principal of one of the first public high schools to reopen after Katrina. Laurie and her staff find they must fight each day not only to educate the city's teenagers, but to keep the Walker community safe and whole.

In this powerful narrative non-fiction debut, the lives of these three characters provide listeners with a vivid and sobering portrait of education in twenty-first-century America. Hope Against Hope works in the same tradition as Random Family and There Are No Children Here to capture the challenges of growing up and learning in a troubled world.

©2013 Sarah Carr (P)2013 Audible Inc.

Good story, but not told all that well

I think the stories were probably really compelling stories, but it was easy not to care about the people involved. Also, the narrator doesn't know how to pronounce the words properly. They should have gotten someone from New Orleans to do the reading.

A good listen, excellent storytelling

I really enjoyed listening to this book. By focusing on a small number of characters, the author is able to find a good picture of the New Orleans school systems and their struggles to find a way. The format makes for easy listening in the sense that this is a book that you do not have to have in front of you to enjoy.

Good book, but mis-matched narrator

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would definitely recommend this book to a friend. It is an interesting book dealing with the history and reform of education, race relations, and New Orleans... but for whatever reason, as an audiobook I can't recommend it. The narrator is a good one - one of my current favorites, in fact - but this book is definitely not her strongest performance; in some ways she sounds bored... and I know she is capable of much better...

Would you be willing to try another one of Jorjeana Marie’s performances?

Definitely! I loved her performance in "Hope - A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland", which is what makes this performance so much more disappointing.

Any additional comments?

Read the print book, and check out this narrator's other performances... but this narrator and this book just don't gel with me.