Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938

by R. A. Scotti

Overview

“Gripping. . . . An intrinsically thrilling tale.” —New York Times Book Review

It was the Perfect Storm, but instead of raging far out in the Atlantic, the Great Hurricane of 1938 left a wake of death and destruction across seven states. Sudden Sea re-creates that terrifying September day in gripping detail, focusing on the intense human drama that unfolded as an unlikely alignment of meteorological conditions conspired to bring to New England’s tropical cyclone so devastating that it would require the entire coastline of the Northeast to be remapped. Drawing upon newspaper accounts, the personal testimony of survivors, and archival footage, R. A. Scotti follows the trajectory of the awful wind—and recovers for posterity the lost stories of those whose lives, families, and communities were indelibly changed.

“An amazing story. . . . Inevitably, people will compare this book to The Perfect Storm. I think Sudden Sea may well be better. . . . What more can I tell you? Buy this book.” —National Geographic

“Riveting, carefully researched and superbly written. R. A. Scotti has done a wonderful job, not only in casting her tale in empathetic human terms but also in placing it solidly in a historical and social milieu.” —Houston Chronicle

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316054782
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	276
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

R. A. Scotti is the author of three previous works of nonfiction, including Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal-Building St. Peter's and Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938,
and four novels. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

	Prologue: Gone with the Wind	3
1	A Perfect Day	7
2	The Way It Was	25
3	A Shift in the Wind	33
4	Hurricane Watch	37
5	At Sea	51
6	All Aboard	61
7	A Bright Young Man	71
8	Upside Down, Inside Out	83
9	Battening the Hatches	87
10	A One-Hundred-Year Storm	93
11	How Do You Lose a Hurricane?	99
12	The Long Island Express	105
13	Crossing the Sound	119
14	The Atlantic Ocean Bound Out of Bed	125
15	The Dangerous Right Semicircle	137
16	Providence	161
17	The Tempest	171
18	Cast Adrift	189
19	All Quiet	203
20	The Reckoning	209
21	The Last of the Old New England Summers	225
	Afterword	235
Appendix	A Nickel for Your Story	239
	Author's Acknowledgments	245
	Sources and Chapter Notes	247
	Selected Bibliography	257
	Index	265

Editorial Reviews

Relying on published accounts, meteorological analysis and interviews with survivors, she has an inherently gripping story on her hands. There are the facts of the storm, which are monumentally appalling. The human face of loss is even more excruciating. In the aftermath, Scotti writes, it was necessary to count the dead along the beaches of Rhode Island by air because so many ''had put on their boots to slog through the water.'' The heavy boots ''weighed the bodies down so that only the tops of their heads were visible.'' — Erica Sanders

The New York Times

Rather than inundating the reader with too many horror stories, Scotti personalizes the terror. She profiles a socialite who never forgot the man who sheltered her and 10 other storm refugees. She visited him regularly until his death. Then she erected a beautiful granite cross to him.

Scotti is wise to include not just nature's horror but also humanity's kindness as well.

USA Today

Mystery writer Scotti (The Hammer’s Eye, 1988, etc.) applies her suspense-building skills to the story of a murderous storm that capped a punishing decade. It’s hard to go wrong with the raw material provided by the Great Hurricane of 1938. The narrative follows the storm as it made landfall in Florida, pushed up the coast, and raced from Cape Hatteras to Long Island in a mere seven hours. Where appropriate, Scotti adds brief background material on the nature of hurricanes, the quality of weather forecasting at the time, and the histories of the towns hardest hit, particularly in Rhode Island; she also compares the 1938 storm to others in the past. But she saves her most powerful writing for the hurricane itself, describing the storm watch and the havoc wrought when it reached land with the help of a wide sampling of firsthand accounts. "The scene around us in the attic was unbelievable," recalls a woman who was ten at the time. "The waves, at the level of the attic floor, beat unceasingly against the house, which trembled and shook." Scotti matches the wild images of the eyewitness accounts with her own flair for descriptive narrative: "The ocean banged on doors and windows . . . then it went upstairs into the bedrooms where families sought refuge, and chased them higher yet, into third floors and attics, onto rooftops, until there was no place to go but into the sea." Almost 700 people died, 433 of them in Rhode Island, where the storm surge buried Providence under 12 feet of water and where Scotti concentrates her story. With power and phone lines down, it was days before people understood the full extent of the devastation, which along the shoreline in particular was complete: "Whatthey eye saw, the mind could not process and the heart refused to accept." A darkly intense portrait. (16 pp. b&w photos, not seen, 4 maps) Agent: Joe Spieler/Spieler Agency

Kirkus Reviews