This story is excerpted from The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, published by Simon & Schuster.
It was March 2021, and Sheri Neil was throwing together po’boys for the lunch crowd at her namesake Sheri’s Snack Shack, the only restaurant in the small bayou village of Pointe-aux-Chenes, Louisiana. The counter-service sandwich joint stands elevated about 12 feet off the ground, with a big red deck where people can sit as they enjoy one of Sheri’s renowned milkshakes.
At the height of the lunch hour, a woman drove into the parking lot and came running up the stairs. She was a teacher at Pointe-aux-Chenes Elementary School, which served about 80 children from the village of Pointe-aux-Chenes and nearby Ile de Jean Charles, both Indigenous communities that had been eroding for decades. Earlier that morning a representative from the parish school board had shown up unannounced and informed the staff that the parish was closing the school, effective that summer. People had been leaving Pointe-aux-Chenes ... Read more
