etween the levee and the Mississippi River is the batture – a lively slip of wilderness that a tiny community calls home. There's batture land right here in the midst of metropolitan New Orleans – but unless you're lucky enough to know a batture dweller, there's a good chance you weren't aware of one of the city’s most unconventional neighborhoods.

That was certainly true of Macon Fry when he arrived in New Orleans in the 1980s. After a chance encounter with a batture resident at a local watering hole, Macon got his first glimpse of life on the river's edge and became so entranced that he built himself a life there. His obsession with the batture ultimately led him to publish his new book, "They Called Us River Rats: The Last Batture Settlement of New Orleans." Macon joins us in the studio to discuss his decades of research about lives spent there in relative obscurity.