This first novel is a modern day tale of big wave riding, native American mysticism and the enduring friendship between a group of young surfers who challenge nature and the waves of surfings most terrifying spot - Thunder Bay!
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Dear Michael, A mutual friend sent me a copy of your book "Thunder Bay," which arrived today. I have not yet forgiven him. Or you. Though I think he may be easier to forgive as undoubtedly he meant well. Three days ago we received notice form the IRS, giving us until September 11 to pay an impossible amount of money or they would put a lien on our home and begin carting off everything that isn't nailed down ( vehicles, garden tillers, chain saws, etc). A similar letter was received a week earlier from the Missouri Department of Revenue. And due to a massive betrayal by my publisher, Harper San Francisco, I am now in the midst of the fight of my life to save our family home of twenty-five years. The audacity of intruding upon all the countless tasks that I must now undertake to prevent this land of which we have been stewards from falling into the hands of the timber company, et.al... So thrust upon me at a time like this a book as interesting and well written that I find it near impossible to put down is neither a kindness nor a gift but a genuine intrusion. It is only through the utmost discipline that now, after several chapters, I am at last able to ratchet my attention from your compelling narrative in order to write this letter. Michael, "Thunder Bay" drips of experience. It reeks of experience. Ninety-percent of the books that I'm sent - books with endorsement requests ( especially in the new age category) do not require any effort to put down. Most of them require an effort to avoid flinging across the room - they're such rehashes of second-hand reiterations of third- and forth-hand experience. But your book is real. You have written from your experience, from your heart. As a former Santa Cruz surfer myself, it is hardly ethical the way it draws me, never once asking my consent, until I feel I must open it again and resume reading. It's as addictive as... never mind, or as... better left unsaid, or even as... well, the point is: "Thunder Bay" is worth the paper it is printed on. And in my estimation only a handful of the sixty-five thousand or so books published each are. In truth, Michael, "Thunder Bay" is well worth my reading time. To what ever degree it distracts me from the seemingly urgent need of my present-day human world, I trust it will reward me in kind with insights, humor, and truth that will contribute to my path and purpose in this life. I, too, believe in writing only from experience, and therefore enclose a copy of my book, "Flat Rock Journal." All the best to you, brother. Given enough time I'm sure that I will eventually bring myself to forgive you. In friendship, Ken Carey." -- August 1996 - A personal letter from Ken Carey, author of Flat Rock Journal: A Day in the Ozark Mountains , The Return of the Bird Tribes, The Star Seed Transmissions
This Santa Cruz adventurer writes passionately about his sport, surfing. DeGregorio's novel tells of a legendary surfing spot (akin to Mavericks) and what happens to the purity of the sport when fame, media and egos collide. It is, he insists a novel about spiritual journey and continuity -- Metro Santa Cruz April 8, 1996, Capitola Book Cafe
Waves of Mavericks power surfers novel" - "Death in the pages of Thunder Bay is eerily echoed in real life" - By the time Mike DeGregorio fathered the Big Stick Surfing Association in 1983, he had been watching for years as the Santa Cruz breaks became crowded with increasingly hostile, territorial surfers - surfers who apparently had never learned or who didn't remember, why we surf in the first place. "It's for fun. It's for camaraderie, for enjoying the beauty of the water. And to hoot your friends on," says DeGregorio, 49, a Soquel High grad who started surfing in 1960. Hark back 30 years to the famous Ron Stoner photo of Tom Lonardo, arms upraised, hooting as Bill Fury trims across a perfect San Blas peeler. That's what surfing is to DeGregorio; a source of friendship, natural beauty and spiritual succor. Now more than a decade later, with his novel Thunder Bay, DeGregorio has revisited that theme with a story based loosely on Mavericks, the pioneers who first surfed it and the media-fed circus that followed. And in a coincidence that is best described as uncanny, the story Thunder Bay and its hero, Greg Geoffreys, presaged the death of big wave rider, Mark Foo at Mavericks. "I felt this spiritual kind of power when I went out there," DeGregorio says of that visit in November, 1992. Walking out at Pillar Point at Half Moon Bay, "I felt like I was on the bow of a huge ocean liner, with these gigantic waves slapping against the sides." Looking around, the bay before him and the radar installation to his side, DeGregorio said the contrast between the natural and manmade worlds felt like an Ian Flemming movie. Awed by what he had experienced there, DeGregorio continued to return to Mavericks as often as he could, sometimes two or three times a week, to shoot video or simply watch. Then one night nearly a year later, as he lay sleeping in bed, DeGregorio was jolted awake by what he says felt like a lightning bolt through the solar plexus. He said it threw him up off the bed. "It felt like I had been microwaved." DeGregorio, who had taken leave of his long time Silicon Valley technical-writing job just months before, believes the force that threw him from the covers was the powerful creative surge that was loosed as he shed the stress of his career. Two nights later he awoke again, this time with the story of Thunder Bay in his head. "The book is about the spiritual continuity that that lies there," says DeGregorio. It begins with an apocalyptic tale of Thunder bay's early Indian inhabitants. Against this backdrop, centuries later, four young men from a small Northern California town, presumably Half Moon Bay, unite to form the Brotherhood. Soon the books hero, Greg Geofferys ( who it would be safe to say is based on Mavericks trailblazer, Jeff Clark ( is drawn to surf the terrifying waves at Thunder Bay. This attracts the attention of a visiting magazine journalist, who publishes an article on Geofferys. The ensuing attentions threatens to destroy the Brotherhood as greed and egos rise to the surface. "The turning point in the story came one day when I was walking down the path to the point," says DeGregorio. Doc Renneker, who along with Clark was among the first to surf Mavericks, "stopped me and said, "You're really messing this place up,' meaning all the media. People started invading the spot. It was changing Mavericks, making it a place where they were surfing to pump up their own egos., not to surf with their friends." In the novel, a gang of surfers from a nearby town challenges the Brotherhood and the conflict is settled - by death. "The story started taking a turn," says DeGregorio. "I could see that nature was going to rebel, to strike out against the invaders. And that's what happened in my story. And that's how it played out in the ten days before Foo died." Indeed, DeGregorio had two Library of Congress copyrights on his book before Foo died surfing Mavericks on Dec. 21, 1994. In another small yet remarkable coincidence, Renneker had no knowledge of DeGregorio's book and its strong Native American spiritualism when he spoke at the memorial for Foo. Recounting the several days of huge swell that preceded Foo's death, Renneker said, "It's too bad that we're not truly Native Americans in the sense that if we lived here long ago and we weren't so Westernized, we could understand what was taking place...If we were of a time when people were able to understand things like that, it would have been seen as a very significant time, of a momentous nature." To this day, DeGregorio is still astonished by the parallels. "The whole thing was just a story until I went to that memorial." -- San Jose Mercury News -Thursday, April 4, 1996, Deb Hopewell, Staff writer
Who needs to get cold and tired surfing with a story teller like DeGregorio around to tell you what its like to surf big waves? DeGregorio, author of Thunder Bay , writes with passion about the sport he loves, but he also broadens the scope of his experience to include the spiritual rewards of meeting Lady Gaia on her own terms. -- Metro Santa Cruz Tuesday August 13, 1996, Capitola Book Cafe
This Santa Cruz adventurer writes passionately about his sport, surfing. DeGregorio's novel tells of a legendary surfing spot (akin to Mavericks) and what happens to the purity of the sport when fame, media and egos collide. It is, he insists a novel about spiritual journey and continuity -- Metro Santa Cruz April 8, 1996, Capitola Book Cafe
Waves of Mavericks power surfers novel" - "Death in the pages of Thunder Bay is eerily echoed in real life" - By the time Mike DeGregorio fathered the Big Stick Surfing Association in 1983, he had been watching for years as the Santa Cruz breaks became crowded with increasingly hostile, territorial surfers - surfers who apparently had never learned or who didn't remember, why we surf in the first place. "It's for fun. It's for camaraderie, for enjoying the beauty of the water. And to hoot your friends on," says DeGregorio, 49, a Soquel High grad who started surfing in 1960. Hark back 30 years to the famous Ron Stoner photo of Tom Lonardo, arms upraised, hooting as Bill Fury trims across a perfect San Blas peeler. That's what surfing is to DeGregorio; a source of friendship, natural beauty and spiritual succor. Now more than a decade later, with his novel Thunder Bay, DeGregorio has revisited that theme with a story based loosely on Mavericks, the pioneers who first surfed it and the media-fed circus that followed. And in a coincidence that is best described as uncanny, the story Thunder Bay and its hero, Greg Geoffreys, presaged the death of big wave rider, Mark Foo at Mavericks. "I felt this spiritual kind of power when I went out there," DeGregorio says of that visit in November, 1992. Walking out at Pillar Point at Half Moon Bay, "I felt like I was on the bow of a huge ocean liner, with these gigantic waves slapping against the sides." Looking around, the bay before him and the radar installation to his side, DeGregorio said the contrast between the natural and manmade worlds felt like an Ian Flemming movie. Awed by what he had experienced there, DeGregorio continued to return to Mavericks as often as he could, sometimes two or three times a week, to shoot video or simply watch. Then one night nearly a year later, as he lay sleeping in bed, DeGregorio was jolted awake by what he says felt like a lightning bolt through the solar plexus. He said it threw him up off the bed. "It felt like I had been microwaved." DeGregorio, who had taken leave of his long time Silicon Valley technical-writing job just months before, believes the force that threw him from the covers was the powerful creative surge that was loosed as he shed the stress of his career. Two nights later he awoke again, this time with the story of Thunder Bay in his head. "The book is about the spiritual continuity that that lies there," says DeGregorio. It begins with an apocalyptic tale of Thunder bay's early Indian inhabitants. Against this backdrop, centuries later, four young men from a small Northern California town, presumably Half Moon Bay, unite to form the Brotherhood. Soon the books hero, Greg Geofferys ( who it would be safe to say is based on Mavericks trailblazer, Jeff Clark ( is drawn to surf the terrifying waves at Thunder Bay. This attracts the attention of a visiting magazine journalist, who publishes an article on Geofferys. The ensuing attentions threatens to destroy the Brotherhood as greed and egos rise to the surface. "The turning point in the story came one day when I was walking down the path to the point," says DeGregorio. Doc Renneker, who along with Clark was among the first to surf Mavericks, "stopped me and said, "You're really messing this place up,' meaning all the media. People started invading the spot. It was changing Mavericks, making it a place where they were surfing to pump up their own egos., not to surf with their friends." In the novel, a gang of surfers from a nearby town challenges the Brotherhood and the conflict is settled - by death. "The story started taking a turn," says DeGregorio. "I could see that nature was going to rebel, to strike out against the invaders. And that's what happened in my story. And that's how it played out in the ten days before Foo died." Indeed, DeGregorio had two Library of Congress copyrights on his book before Foo died surfing Mavericks on Dec. 21, 1994. In another small yet remarkable coincidence, Renneker had no knowledge of DeGregorio's book and its strong Native American spiritualism when he spoke at the memorial for Foo. Recounting the several days of huge swell that preceded Foo's death, Renneker said, "It's too bad that we're not truly Native Americans in the sense that if we lived here long ago and we weren't so Westernized, we could understand what was taking place...If we were of a time when people were able to understand things like that, it would have been seen as a very significant time, of a momentous nature." To this day, DeGregorio is still astonished by the parallels. "The whole thing was just a story until I went to that memorial." -- San Jose Mercury News -Thursday, April 4, 1996, Deb Hopewell, Staff writer
Who needs to get cold and tired surfing with a story teller like DeGregorio around to tell you what its like to surf big waves? DeGregorio, author of Thunder Bay , writes with passion about the sport he loves, but he also broadens the scope of his experience to include the spiritual rewards of meeting Lady Gaia on her own terms. -- Metro Santa Cruz Tuesday August 13, 1996, Capitola Book Cafe
From the Publisher
Michael DeGregorio is a refreshing local talent from the Monterey Bay area. Thunder Bay received excellent reviews in the San Jose Mercury News and Metro Santa Cruz and was acknowledged by Good Times" weekly. In addition, Thunder Bay was listed by Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (GNSI), Zan La Hara, as recommended reading for those wishing to pique their interest in the lore of the Santa Cruz area. La Hara listed Thunder Bay with Steinbeck's The Pearl." Cannery Row, The Sea of Cortez and The Long Valley.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still an outstanding read...,
By
This review is from: Thunder Bay (Paperback)
I picked this up again and read it over the weekend. It's a GREAT book with very descriptive prose and a true surfer's perspective. It's got a surfing backdrop but the story line keeps you turning page after page.I highly recommend this to both surfers and non-surfers alike!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Surfing passages were descriptive and exciting.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Thunder Bay (Paperback)
A book for surfers. The dialog, surfing passages, and friendships seem right-on. Can be over-descriptive in places.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So good you won't be able to stop reading it!!!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Thunder Bay (Paperback)
There is never a dull second in this book. After I started this book I HAD to finish it. I recommend everyone read this book! It is excellently written, very detailed and vivid. You feel like you are really there. It's SPECTACULAR! ------Serena Hanson
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