The best books for lovers of the shore and the sea

As a lifetime shore resident, I gravitate to books set at the beaches of New Jersey, and such is the case for Katie Runde’s debut novel The Shore.

Her core growing-up memories stemmed from both living at the shore and from her family’s boardwalk/beached based businesses. She used her experiences to craft a deep and moving novel about how Brian Dunne’s wife, Margot, and two teenage daughters, Liz and Evy, come to terms with unimaginable grief and loss.

When I interviewed Runde for an article I wrote for Jersey Shore Magazine, we bonded over shared experiences of transforming grief into writing beautiful stories set at similar shore locations despite very different journeys for our main characters. The Shore helped me to examine my own grief through different lenses.

I’ve always admired Bruce Springsteen’s innate storytelling ability and purposeful selection of every word he writes.

His memoir, Born to Run, recounts his steadfast pursuit of becoming a musician, from his early days of performing in Asbury Park to the present-day pockets of solitude he finds while sitting on his motorcycle at the Manasquan Inlet watching the tides come and go.

Springsteen’s knack of weaving colorful and authentic stories makes me want to be a better writer. He underscores each singular topic he writes about as unique yet universal, something we can all relate to in one way or another.

He’s a homegrown dreamer with an unrivaled imagination, and when I’m driving through his hometown of Freehold or strolling the boards in Asbury Park, I am reminded of his immense impact.

I’ve always wanted to learn how to surf, and I stumbled upon Diane Cardwell’s memoir Rockaway: Surfing Headlong into a New Life while we were locked down in the middle of the pandemic.

She writes of learning how to surf in midlife and how finding her balance in the ocean led to discovering balance in her life. I marvel at her ability to set her passions above her fear and discovering a home among like-minded people while building a life centered around joy.

She not only embraced but celebrated the unknown, and that led her to discover her true self. After I read her memoir, I booked my first surf lesson, and while I still have a lot to learn, Cardwell’s voice reminds me to get onto a board again.

I’ve read Jaimal Yogis’ Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea countless times.

His coming-of-age story recounts his experiences after traveling, rather running away, to Hawaii as a teenager with little money and only a few belongings to learn how to surf. Riding the blue barrel waves and the salty waters, alongside wisdom from his mentor, led to him realizing the science of surfing, the formation of the ocean and its underwater typography, and the quest for enlightenment are forever meshing and melding together.

Yogis helped me to grasp the space between moments is just as important as moments themselves, and the essence of just “being” is sometimes enough.

Dominick Mazzagetti retells the history, culture, and landscapes found along the Jersey Shore in his nonfiction book The Jersey Shore: The Past, Present & Future of a National Treasure.

This book is a well-researched labor of love and discusses how the area from Sandy Hook to Cape May rose from being undeveloped sandy acres of land in the late 1600s to grand tourist resorts in the late 1800s.

I’ve used Mazzagetti’s book as research for articles and other works I write, especially about shipwrecks and Superstorm Sandy’s devastating impact in 2012. His clear voice engages and informs in a way that makes the place I call home come alive.