Margaret Renkl at the website www.chaper16.org, "a community of Tennessee writers, readers and passersby", explains the motivation and inspiration behind this collection:
"Everyone in town has a camera in his pocket, so this flood has already been documented beyond any inevitably iconic moment in Tennessee history. But at Chapter 16 we wanted to try to give words to the experience, too.
We aren't trying to blunt the full impact of the disaster, to render it less overwhelming by boxing it into the artful shape of an essay. There will be time for someone in love with language to capture the sweep and majesty of this breathtaking natural event, and the sweep and majesty, too, of the way Tennesseans have responded to it. But with water still standing in people's kitchens and mud still caked in their hair, this is not that time.
Instead, we're offering a series of tiny vignettes, each telling one small part of the story of Tennessee's flood. In many ways, these are only the barest edges of the tapestry, for no one truly devastated this week had the time, or the heart, to write an essay. You won't read here—at least not yet—about what it feels like to lose every piece of furniture in your house, or to learn that someone you love didn't make it out in time. The real heart of the story of this flood is still to come."
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