Silent Came the Monster by Amy Hill Hearth

 

Reviewed by Jeanne 

The summer of 1916 was hot—very hot.  Those who could afford it left the cities and headed for the mountains or the beach to escape the heat.  Charles Vansant, the only son of a prosperous family and a promising young stockbroker, had just arrived in Beach Haven, New Jersey to join his family.  Too eager to wait, he sets out an evening swim, accompanied by a dog.  Suddenly the dog turned back.  As onlookers shouted warnings, something in the water struck Charles. As lifeguards and bystanders rushed to help, they noticed the water was turning red.

Dr. Edwin Halsey already thought that 1916 was shaping up to be a very odd year, what with German U-boats plaguing the Atlantic as part of the European war, not to mention an outbreak of polio, so to hear that a man had been bitten by a fish and needed medical attention was just another in a long list of strange things. Concerned that his potential patient might not survive the trip from Beach Haven, Halsey and his new nurse set out by automobile.

They are too late.

Halsey looks at the victim’s wounds and announces that he has been bitten by a shark, which causes consternation among those gathered around, most of whom scoff at the idea.  It must have a mackerel or a sea turtle or perhaps a school of fish but not a shark. There are no sharks around New Jersey and besides, sharks don’t bite humans. Talk of sharks will just stir people up and cause a panic.  Despite Halsey’s pleas, the beaches are going to stay open.

After all, it’s not likely to ever happen again. 

Hearth is a resident of the Jersey Shore and was inspired by the true events of 1916 when for the first time a death was recorded as being from a shark bite.  Even more frightening was that more attacks occurred in a relatively short time period in the same area—and not just in the ocean, but in a river at a local swimming hole. Peter Benchley was inspired in part by these attacks when he wrote Jaws, but used a contemporary setting.  Hearth wanted to portray the  social and political forces of the time, and creates characters to help voice those themes.

But for me, some of the characters never quite came to life.  They were more mouthpieces for various points of view while the valiant Dr. Halsey struggles to get the truth out there.  He’s also contending with his daughter, a willful young woman who is entranced with an unsuitable young man and also enticed by modern notions—like wearing short hair. The reader is told about the characters, not shown. The most effective character is Margaret, a young woman who is a witness to some of the events.  Even if the characters fall flat, the story itself still has power.

The library owns both  Close to Shore: A True Story of Terror in the Age of Innocence by Michael Capuzzo and Twelve Days of Terror: A Definitive Investigation of the 1916 New Jersey Shark Attacks by Richard G. Fernicola which provide factual information, if the novel piques your curiosity.