When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun stayed in the city to protect his home and contracting business. A loving husband and father of four, he prepared for the storm even as his family left the city.

Having survived the hurricane, Zeitoun went out onto the flooded streets in his second-hand canoe to help people in need and hand out supplies. Within a week, however, he was arrested by Homeland security for suspected theft. He was placed in a makeshift jail at the city’s bus (or Greyhound bus) station and later moved to maximum security prison.

Abdulrahman’s story is mirrored with Kathy’s efforts to find her lost husband, efforts that for the most part met bureaucracy and unfathomable indifference. Alone and facing dead ends with every attempt to reunite, their only hope was for the slightest glimpse of humanity to shine through in a city gone mad.

Their story resonates because such people are among us everyday; it’s just that they usually don’t get to have their stories heard. To this end Zeitoun echoes other classic humanist texts such as John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me and John Hersey’s Hiroshima, both of which share a similar emotional intensity.

Zeitoun has soul, pure and simple. The tale of Abdulrahman and his wife Kathy is beautifully told and Eggers reins in all literary pretension and instead lets his story unfold in its own meditative style.

This book won’t change the world, but it might just remind you to let people know how much they mean to you, never once stopping to question the wheres, hows and whys of human emotion.

And that can only be a good thing.