Family Reading My Father In an overflowing box in my dad’s home office, I made a head-turning discovery. It was almost too late. Photo Illustration by Slate. Photo courtesy of Jordan Hirsh. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. The morning before Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, I helped my parents batten down their house in uptown New Orleans. The last step was tending to my dad’s home offices, plural. His overflow of books, journals, and files from the history department of the University of New Orleans filled my brother’s former bedroom and an enclosed porch, both lined with exposed windows on the second floor. My dad couldn’t do much to protect his work himself. Seven years after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he moved haltingly, like each limb weighed a ton. With traffic on the evacuation route worsening by the minute, I didn’t have time to do much either.…