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Summary Of Sudden Sea The Great Hurricane Of 1938

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Joe Unsworth
MAR 356
29 Nov. 2016
Book Review “Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938” by R. A. Scotti was first published in 2003 by Little, Brown and Company in New York City. The novel attempts to recreate the confusion, chaos, and devastation before, during, and after one of the largest hurricanes to hit New England. The “Long Island Express,” as it was named for its speed and impact location, killed 682 people and had massive implications for the region as a whole particularly, the coastal areas where its effects were felt the most. The novel draws less on these implications and instead focuses on a play-by-play of the storm from several perspectives. As such, it ventures from the realm of nonfiction and towards that of historical fiction. …show more content…

These scenes are stitched together in a way that is meant to bring nuance to the story, but instead was hard to interpret and confusing. It was sometimes hard to know which characters were being referred to and where each stood chronologically with relation to the others. For example, two of the plot lines had characters with the same surname. In this case, it would have been helpful for the separate groups to have been further differentiated and identified. For these reasons, I believe that if the author was trying to convey some sort of complex plot, she did not succeed in this …show more content…

A. Scotti’s book, “Sudden Sea,” it is important to look at the novel in the context of its intended audience. If the novel was intended for an action hungry audience looking for an easy read with just enough historical context to make it seem real, Scotti has succeeded. If the novel was meant for the few looking to acquire new and meaningful knowledge about the 1938 hurricane, I believe it has not delivered in that regard. My goal in reading the book aligned more with the latter of those two options and so I do not believe the novel to have been worthwhile, but others with different tastes might argue otherwise. One thing that is clear is that this book has not made a lasting contribution to its field. That designation should be reserved for pieces with bigger claims and more evidence to support

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