With all the craft, drama, and storytelling magic for which he is known, Richard Martin Stern traps his readers in the web of ambitions, professions, love affairs, intrigues, politics, and passions of the community of Encino Beach, California. Meanwhile, deep under the sea, great forces are building toward a massive geologic shift that will start a great wave, a tsunami, racing across the ocean at 400 miles an hour.
At first it is a wave no more than a foot high, moving at fantastic speed. But as it reaches the shallower waters near land it begins to slow and rise. In constricted bays and coves, it becomes a mountain of water hundreds of feet high, capable of instantly destroying anything made by man. The citizens of Encino are warned, and thus they begin their own human, seismic upheavals—when the tsunami reaches the shore, Mr. Stern’s story reaches an overwhelming climax.
This is also a story of people—silly people, intelligent people, good people, bad people, courageous people, frightened people, some generous, some selfish, some scarcely worth consideration except that they are part of the whole—reacting to a natural catastrophe.
With all the craft, drama, and storytelling magic for which he is known, Richard Martin Stern traps his readers in the web of ambitions, professions, love affairs, intrigues, politics, and passions of the community of Encino Beach, California. Meanwhile, deep under the sea, great forces are building toward a massive geologic shift that will start a great wave, a tsunami, racing across the ocean at 400 miles an hour.
At first it is a wave no more than a foot high, moving at fantastic speed. But as it reaches the shallower waters near land it begins to slow and rise. In constricted bays and coves, it becomes a mountain of water hundreds of feet high, capable of instantly destroying anything made by man. The citizens of Encino are warned, and thus they begin their own human, seismic upheavals—when the tsunami reaches the shore, Mr. Stern’s story reaches an overwhelming climax.
This is also a story of people—silly people, intelligent people, good people, bad people, courageous people, frightened people, some generous, some selfish, some scarcely worth consideration except that they are part of the whole—reacting to a natural catastrophe.