"Katrina's Sandcastles" is Kaycee Eckhardt's harrowing and hopeful journey of becoming an effective teacher and building a new school in post-Katrina New Orleans. Beginning as a first year teacher, Eckhardt recounts her path through four different schools in the New Orleans neighborhoods of Holly Grove, Algiers, Treme, and the 9th Ward, planting the seeds of literacy in the most dire of circumstances. With affection and brutal honesty, she relates the circumstances of several children, the belief in all things possible, and finally, her most difficult decision of all. Filled with heartbreaking stories, teacher survival strategies, and an excess of heart, "Katrina's Sandcastles" is a story of sacrifice and struggle, belief and failure, despair and ultimate redemption in the heart of the Crescent City.