Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane Of 1938 (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
In 1938, the most powerful hurricane to ever strike the Northeast of the US hit Long Island and New England. The hurricane was completely unpredicted and the death toll reflects that fact. There were 682 dead and 1,754 injured. Every state in New England other than Maine had deaths but no state suffered like Rhode Island with 433 killed. Barrier beaches on Long Island and Rhode Island were swept clean of houses with the only survivors being those who had fled at the first sign of the storm or those who rode the roof of a broken building to the mainland.R.A. Scotti has captured the feel for the day by letting us meet some of the people who experienced the hurricane and hearing about that day from them. She starts by introducing us to some of the children who live on the island of Jamestown, Rhode Island and some of the residents of Napatree, a barrier beach right in the path of the hurricane. The author then shifts our focus, bringing us into a discussion of the incredibly powerful hurricane and the men whose job it is to track it. And as their failures come into focus, as the hurricane is lost by the Weather Service but is still aimed at Long Island, the author brings us back to the people who will be the first to experience this beast.This is the best part of the book. Her descriptions of how the hurricane changed the geography of the places it struck, how it changed the economy of the area, and mostly how it affected the people are all well captured. By showing us through the eyes of a few witnesses, the author gives us more than just a glimpse into that terrible day. The horror of the storm is shown through the deaths of so many adults and children. Scotti's writing is good - journalistic - if not poetic. The pictures are well chosen to help tell the story. The pictures and maps of Napatree, for example, before and after the storm shows a beach crowded with homes turned into a vacant sand dune. The maps show a barrier beach moved, breached, and destroyed.The end result is a well written book that tells an interesting story without piling on too much detail. At about 250 pages, the book is long enough to tell the story but not so long as to fill the book with more that the story required. If you are interested in the history of weather or the history of Long Island or southern New England, then I can easily recommend this book.
Growing up in Connecticut, I never thought about hurricane threats until August of 1976 when I was newly married and mother of an eight-month-old baby. Even though we lived 50 miles inland I remember listening to the weather report with great alarm, taping our windows and battening down the hatches, and waiting for the arrival of Hurricane Belle. She turned out to be a non-event.Nine years later, in September of 1985, Hurricane Gloria arrived. By then we were living in a shoreline town, so we decided to evacuate inland to stay with my parents. On our way up we stopped to pick up my aunt who lived in a mobile home. Our children were bubbling over with excitement until my aunt reprimanded them saying, “You think this is funny? You have no idea what a dangerous thing a hurricane is!” She went on to describe the horror of living through the hurricane of 1938, when she was a young 24 year-old mother.My father was 17 years-old, walking home from school, about 25 miles inland, when The Great Hurricane of 1938 struck Connecticut suddenly and with no warning. Hurricane Sandy and the destruction her storm surge caused to our city beach impressed me, living here a mile away from the water. But when we showed our pictures to my dad, who is now 90, he shrugged and said it was nothing compared to the devastation left by the 1938 storm.That's when I decided to learn more about The Great Hurricane he and my aunt survived, and that is what led me to find this book. It was compelling and heartbreaking reading so many frightening stories told by some of the people who lived through it. I get it now – my aunt's reaction and my father's as well. I could scarcely put the book down until I was finished and am grateful to R. A. Scotti for helping me to get a much better picture of that horrific, sudden storm. Her writing certainly made that historic event come alive for me.
What do You think about Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane Of 1938 (2004)?
A little uneven in the fact that the book opens up with Katherine Hepburn saying goodbye to Howard Hughes and a marriage proposal hanging in the air as he leaves in his plane, (pardon the pun). We next see Hepburn coming home from the beach to her Connecticut house as the wind and waves start to build. She isn't mentioned again. Of course the reader want to know how her home and family fared during this unprecedented and devastating hurricane that surprised New England on September 21, 1938. Also what is unbelievable, is the fact that the writer paints this storm as so quick moving that the residents didn't seem to know what was going on. I'm sure that is the case but hard to understand from a modern standpoint. Storm surge and walls of water 20 feet high submerge communities in minutes with a record number of deaths and financial loss even by today's standards. Some areas wiped off the map.
—Garnet
This was great. A lot of science was thrown in here. I found out more about hurricanes than I probably ever wanted to know. Many personal stories in here. I had previously seen a PBS documentary on the storm. And it told in detail the story of the Moores and their wild ride on the roof of their house ... after it came loose from the house. It is a terrifying story. You don't usually think of hurricanes in Rhode Island or even Long Island.There is one horrendous story after another. My kind of book. I adore a good disaster book. Especially if it is non-fiction. It REALLY happened! People really survived this. It is this storm that made people start checking the weather before they leave the house in the morning.
—Jan C
I thought that overall this book was alright. It had its interesting moments, but for the most part it was kind of a boring documentary, and I wasn't too fond of that. This book mostly talks about the damage that the hurricane did on the whole east coast, but at the same time what it did was follow a few different families letting you know their experience during this time. Since I have a house right where this book is located, that is why i thought it was interesting, but otherwise it was pretty plain. Although the pictures in the middle of the book gave me a better understanding and view of what the damage in fact looked like at the time. At the end of the book they told all of these fun stories that had happened during this hurricane and ironic but almost miracle like things happened. For instance this one guy was swept away by the hurricane while carrying his two twin sons, and they all ended up floating on the same roof top through their town. I like to read stories like those, but i am not a huge fan of the scientific documentary books like this one.
—Charlie Painter
