Guest blogger Bill Branley is a writer and jazz musician who grew up in New Orleans and now lives in the Seattle area with his wife and two children. He is the author of Sea Changes, a novel that benefits Book Relief.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had the opportunity to speak on live talk radio around the country about New Orleans one year after Hurricane Katrina. A question that always comes up is “What’s going to happen to the culture of New Orleans?”

My answer is that the culture is represented in the everyday working class people who did the things that make New Orleans famous: the writers, musicians, chefs, waiters, artists, restaurant owners and others who provide the distinctive food, music, art and literature that visitors love to talk about long after they leave the city. Unfortunately, many of those New Orleanians are now scattered to the four winds. The New York Times reported recently that Katrina evacuees landed in all 50 states. That means the culture of New Orleans is dispersed to all of those places!

As a native of New Orleans, I find this very disturbing and sad. So, how exactly do we get evacuees to go back to a half-destroyed city with bad schools and high crime? I think a good start is with books.

Have you ever noticed how books attract people? Put a shelf of books out on a sidewalk somewhere and people will stop and open one. Create a room full of books and people will walk in and browse. (If you also serve a perfect latte they will love you forever.) Yes, books attract people because we find them hard to resist. Books come in so many flavors that you can satisfy almost everyone by presenting even a modest collection of books.

That is why I am such a fan of the Book Relief program started by First Book to help restore book supplies in regions damaged by hurricanes last year. If evacuees return to their communities and find functioning libraries and book collections they might become curious enough to stick around and see what other improvements are in the works.

I had the pleasure of donating copies of my novel, Sea Changes, to a group called Social Change Caravan. This group organized a road trip from Seattle to New Orleans to help Katrina evacuees move back and get resettled. I thought they might like some reading material for the trip so I gave them a carton of my books. They were thrilled. Turns out they could raise money for the trip by selling books and other items along the way.

On August 29th I observed the anniversary of Katrina by organizing an event called the Katrina Book Bash. I set up a table in front of my local bookstore and gave away signed copies of Sea Changes to anyone who donated $10 or more to Book Relief. People were happy to help and I was able to raise $394 for the cause. I was amazed at how many people stopped by my table just because they saw a stack of books.

The important point about these two stories is the power that books have to influence as well as entertain and comfort people. We are affected by what we read, and reading makes us want to read more. My wife teaches reading to children and we are constantly impressed at the strong hunger that children have for reading. And once they do start reading you can’t get the books out of their hands!

While it’s true that Gulf Coast communities need a lot of help with basic infrastructure, I think helping restore books is an important and positive step and I would like to thank the staff of Book Relief for taking on this critical project.

Great work!