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MARBLEHEAD — When you think of a hurricane, you can probably picture a massive storm with buckets of rain and violent winds that will often leave behind plenty of destruction in its path.
But the story of these tropical storms is also one that has shaped things from politics, economics, technology, and when the timing was right, the colonization and revolutions in America over the past 500 years.
That’s exactly the story that Marblehead’s best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin’s newest book, A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes tells.
“I can say it’s the most comprehensive history of American hurricanes there is,” Dolin said. “And that’s not saying much, because it’s the only one. It’s a new contribution to the literature.”
And that’s not by accident. Adding to the story and literature of a subject is what Dolin looks to do in his books. All his books have either a maritime or wildlife theme as Dolin always has had a fascination with the ocean.
“Living in Marblehead and New England I see the ocean every day,” Dolin said. “I love the ocean, there’s just something about it and the stories of the ocean that draws me in.”
That started growing up on the coasts of New York and Connecticut. He spent many days exploring beaches and collecting seashells on the way, dreaming of being just like Jacques Cousteau when he grew up.
As he grew older, Dolin wanted to be a seashell scientist. He studied at Brown, Yale and MIT, and held many jobs trying to figure out what he wanted to focus on in his life. During those years he always enjoyed the writing part of his job over working in labs or teaching. Dolin wanted to tell stories, and with the support of his wife, Jennifer Rooks, and a lot of time saving while releasing books, he ended up making a living doing just that.
“It took many years of saving, but the single most important element is my wife,” Dolin said. “She’s always worked, had a good job and supported me. I couldn’t have done it without her support.”
Dolin has spent his career writing non-fiction historical books about everything from pirates, lighthouses, whaling, the fur trade, and more. When starting each, he likes to tackle a subject he has interest in but doesn’t know much about, and uses America’s history as a storytelling guide.
“All my books are about certain things, but the way I look at my books is using those subjects as a backbone to tell a slice of American history,” Dolin said. “You use a specific topic to weave a chronological tale of history.”
With hurricanes, once Dolin took to his converted garage office to delve into researching, he quickly realized although there have been more hurricanes to count over the past 500 years, they’re each unique in their own way.
“When I started working I was a little worried,” Dolin said. “I wanted to tell the stories of many different hurricanes. I asked myself, ‘is this going to be repetitive?’ What I discovered is they’re all unique. They affect different places, people and different dynamics. Each hurricane is its own character.”
Those characters of Mother Nature, along with the people whose lives they’ve touched, are part of what makes A Furious Sky, an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times, work well in Dolin’s eyes. Along with the history, he’s able to weave in a narrative that not only shares accounts of the gripping and at times horrific dramatics, but the story of evolving technology in the field of studying these storms, and the book’s historical pictures are fascinating documents themselves that add to the story.
As Dolin would say, “real life is better than fiction.”
Daniel Kane can be reached at dkane@itemlive.com.
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