Close to Shore: A True Story of Terror in an Age of Innocence

A nonfiction historical thriller about the summer of 1916, when a lone great white shark left its usual deep ocean habitat and headed for the New Jersey shoreline and a farming community eleven miles inland, attacking five people and igniting the most extensive shark hunt in history.

es, 6 hrs.
Read by Len Cariou

Four deaths. One maiming. One shark. . .

In mesmerizing detail, journalist Michael Capuzzo’s CLOSE TO SHORE recounts the dramatic true story of a series of shark attacks that occurred along the New Jersey shore in July 1916 — resulting in the largest shark hunt in history, and the end of Americans’ naivete about the dangers of the sea. Anchored by harrowing and graphic recreations of a rogue Great White Shark’s attacks on five swimmers in two beach towns —as well as in a farming community eleven miles inland — the narrative examines the behavior of the ocean’s greatest predator and the lives and worldview of pre-World War I Americans. The novelistic narrative evokes both the chilling specter of sharks and the rich historical backdrop of Gilded Age America, an era when Americans were just beginning to swim in the ocean, and the Jersey shore, thanks to the railroads, was coming into its own as a play