Sunk Without a Sound : The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde [Hardcover]

Brad Dimock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2001

The mystery of Glen and Bessie Hyde is whitewater navigation's equivalent to Mallory and Irvine's disappearance on Everest in 1924. Just four years later in October 1928, the Hydes, a bright, attractive, and talented young couple built their own wooden sweep scow and launched on a honeymoon voyage down the Green and Colorado Rivers through Grand Canyon. Bessie was the first woman to ever attempt the river. Halfway through Grand Canyon they talked to the press, then disappeared into the gloomy November depths of the gorge. They were never seen again. Despite an extensive series of searches, no trace was found except, eerily, their boat: upright, intact, fully loaded, and snagged in calm water. Glen and Bessie had vanished without a trace. For the next seven decades their tale evolved from simple facts to convoluted folklore and myth. A woman appeared on a river trip in 1971 claiming to be Bessie, having murdered Glen and hiked out. In 1976 a skeleton was found at Grand Canyon with a bullet through the skull. Size, age and circumstance suggested it was the body of Glen Hyde. In 1985 a woman surfaced with a tale of her father, Glenn Hyde, who had disappeared in 1928, but reappeared seven years later with tales of having rafted rivers. He said he had attempted the Colorado through Grand Canyon but "it didn't work out." And he carried a scar on his back from a knife wound, delivered by a woman named Bessie. And in 1992, when Georgie Clark, the most famous of all river runners, died, her past was discovered to be pure fiction. She had been born Bessie, and her lingerie drawer held a marriage record for Glen and Bessie Hyde. And a pistol. Author and boatman Brad Dimock tackled this story with an obsession, tracking each clue, lead, and rumor, even going to the extreme of building a replica of the Hydes' archaic sweep scow for a harrowing journey through Grand Canyon with his own bride. The resulting book, a masterful interweaving of past and present, of pathos and humor, is a classic in outdoor adventure, mystery writing, literary nonfiction, and investigative journalism. With 304 profusely illustrated pages, this beautiful book is not only a joy to look at, but a true page turner.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Combine the wild Colorado River, an adventuresome young couple, and their unexplained disappearance; add an anguished father; pile on rumor and speculation lasting 73 years; and then cap the story with meticulous research, and you have all the ingredients of a compelling mystery. Dimock, a white-water guide and one of the authors of the National Outdoor Book Award-winning The Doing of the Thing, has all the right credentials to investigate the disastrous honeymoon journey of Glen and Bessie Hyde through the Grand Canyon on an unwieldy Idaho sweep scow. Soon after the couple's disappearance in November 1928, Glen's father instigated an extensive search that lasted several months. Only the scow was recovered, fully loaded in calm water. Through the years, a woman claiming to be Bessie surfaced, a skeleton reputed to be Glen's was discovered in a shed at the canyon's southern rim, and the TV program Unsolved Mysteries featured the story in 1985. Dimock here provides a thorough history of Glen's and Bessie's backgrounds and even re-creates part of the Hydes' river route with his own wife in a homemade scow. Profusely illustrated with photographs and maps, this informative account is highly recommended for most public libraries and academic libraries in the region. Janet Ross, Sparks Branch Lib., NV
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...Brad Dimock deserves a medal for bringing them back alive to confront us all. And it’s a helluva read, too." -- Charles Bowden, author, Blood Orchid

"With a gift for storytelling and the obsession of a sleuth, Brad Dimock captivates us..." -- Bruce Berger, author, There Was a River

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Fretwater Press; 1st edition (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892327287
• ISBN-13: 978-1892327284
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,257,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Debunking the myths..., November 11, 2002

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sunk Without a Sound : The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde (Paperback)

Outrageous adventures that capture the imagination, like Lindberg's trans-Atlantic flight, often personify the American spirit, especially in the youth of a new century. But the 1928 honeymoon excursion down the rapids of the Grand Canyon by Glen and Bessie Hyde ended in tragedy, their bodies never recovered, the whole trip shrouded in mystery. This book sets out to tell their story with as many facts as are available, recount the rescue efforts and determine some answers after all these years of speculation.

After reading Grand Ambition, a novel by Lisa Michael's, about the couple's fateful honeymoon, I was curious to know more of the details and explore the lore surrounding the disappearance of Bessie and Glen. Author Dimock gathers what few pertinent facts are available and reconstructs the Hyde's journey, physically experiencing parts of it himself. He even builds a replica of their craft, hoping to ascertain what happened as they moved from one dangerous whitewater course to another. Literally, only speculation remains, because their flat-bottomed scow was found drifting, intact and packed with provisions with no evidence of the bodies. Did they die, or escape? The author also carefully goes over each step of the rescue party's unsuccessful search. As an extra service to the reader, he spends some time debunking the many urban legends that have sprung up over the years, passed from campfire to campfire, further clouding the truth.

The most satisfying part of this book is Dimock's exacting concentration on each phase of the journey given the modernization of river rafting techniques and experience. Easy answers are simply not acceptable to Dimock, and he unfailingly covers every possible situation in the attempt to arrive at a feasible conclusion. In his conscientious writing, this author postulates some scenarios that set my mind at rest. When he fits the pieces of the puzzle together, it's as likely a fit as will be found at this time. And I was relieved to put aside those rumors and innuendoes told with a broad wink, because I would like to think of this couple in peace after such a short and harrowing twist of fate.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Book With Sweepage!, September 14, 2001

By 

Bruce Crocker "agnostictrickster" (Whittier, California United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sunk Without a Sound : The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde (Paperback)

I'm no expert about the Grand Canyon or whitewater rafting - I've visited the canyon about 5 times over the last 30 years, spending 6 days on a spring break backcountry hike on one of the trips, and I've been on one float trip down the San Juan River [Bluff to 'Lake Foul'] on the spring break before or after the canyon hike - so I'm reviewing Sunk Without A Sound by Brad Dimock as an interested and knowledgable layperson. This book is an amazing adventure story, a gripping mystery, a brave piece of experimental historical investigation, the end product of extensive research, and an extremely rational and fair reading of the available evidence.

The book is a tapestry of stories sewn together with several strong threads. The main thread is the story of the failed [?] honeymoon Colorado River trip of Glen and Bessie Hyde in 1928 and the subsequent attempts to find a solution to their disappearance. It is the story of RC Hyde, Glen's father, and his obsessive, but loving, attempts to find his son and his daughter-in-law. It is the story of author Brad Dimock and his wife, Jeri Ledbetter, and their enlightening version of the original Hyde trip [they recreated the original journey in a version of the original sweep scow]. Dimock ties all these pieces together in one seamless piece of non-fiction.

I enjoyed the book immensely, especially the fact that Dimock told the most reasonable story that the research and the evidence supported. I recommend you take a ride throught the twists, the turns, and the rapids of this excellent book.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an exceptionally good read, March 10, 2001

By 

Shane Murphy (Scottsdale, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sunk Without a Sound : The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde (Hardcover)

It's obvious that Dimock has done his homework in researching and writing this superbly crafted book detailing the disappearance of Glenn and Bessie Hyde, the 'honeymoon couple' who attempted a run through Grand Canyon in their sweep scow--Rain-in-the-Face--during 1928. Here we find three great stories packed concisely into one exceptionally good book. It is part mystery novel, part an historical account replete with colorful and obscure Grand Canyon characters, and part the telling of Dimock's own run down the Colorado River in the sweep scow he built to recreate the Hyde's histroic trip. SUNK WITHOUT A SOUND is also, and more importantly, a thorough biography of the life and times of Glen and Bessie Hyde. Their family members appear in startling detail, their history is laid out in a colorfully woven chronology, and their ultimate end is surmised in vivid fashion. Beyond that, the many folk tales surrounding their disappearance are debunked and kindly dismissed with considerable research. Illustrated with maps, diagrams, and an interesting variety of historic Grand Canyon and Hyde family photos, Dimock ultimely takes the reader on a whitewater trip not to be forgotten. Dimock's first book, THE DOING OF THE THING, a biography of riverman Buzz Holmstrom, won the National Outdoor Book Award in 1998. However impressive that my be, SUNK WITHOUT A SOUND is, obviously, destined for much higher accolades.