It was the Perfect Storm. But instead of raging far out in the Atlantic, the Great Hurricane of 1938 left a wake of death and destruction across seven states. It battered J. P. Morgan's Long Island estate, wiped out beach communities from Watch Hill to Newport, flooded the Connecticut Valley, and flattened Vermont's prized maples.Traveling at record speeds, the storm raced up the Atlantic Coast, reaching New York and New England ahead of hurricane warnings and striking with such ferocity that seismographs in Alaska picked up the impact. Winds, clocked at 186 mph, stripped cars of their paint. Walls of water 50 feet high swept homes and entire families out to sea. Sandwiched between the Great Depression and World War II, the storm had a profound impact upon a generation. 'The day of the biggest wind has just passed,' the newswires read the next day, 'and a great part of the most picturesque America, as old as the Pilgrims, has gone beyond recall or replacement.' Drawing upon newspaper accounts, the personal testimony of survivors, forecasters, and archival footage, SUDDEN SEA recounts that terrifying day in gripping detail. Scotti describes the unlikely alignment of meteorological conditions that conspired to bring a tropical cyclone to the Northeast. A masterful storyteller, Scotti follows the trajectory of that awful wind-and recovers for posterity the lost stories of those whose lives, families, and communities were destroyed by the Hurricane of 1938.
My first books were espionage novels. Since this was an exclusively male field, I wrote as R. A. (rather than Rita Angelica) Scotti and gained a reputation as "one of the best modern writers of intrigue." Neither reviewers nor readers suspected my true identity until I dropped the disguise and turned to non-fiction. My mother was born in New England, my father in Italy, and my books reflect the duality. "Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938" recounts the worst natural disaster in New England history. "Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal--Building St. Peter's" is a book that I have wanted to write ever since I stumbled into St Peter's Square. I was 19, on my own for the first time, and awestruck. The magnificence of Michelangelo's basilica led me circuitously to the mystery of Leonardo's Mona Lisa. "Vanished Smile" reopens the case of the mysterious theft of Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911.
