Amy Hill Hearth

"It took me 100 years to figure out that I can't change the world. I can only change Bessie." – Bessie Delany at age 102

I think of this quote from Having Our Say every time I feel frustrated and helpless about our country and the world today.

Realistically, what can I do to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine or Israel or Sudan?

Here in the U.S., our divisions are unlike anything I've experienced in my lifetime. It seems impossible to persuade anyone to consider an alternative point of view. We've become a nation of shouters, not listeners.

So, as Bessie noted, the only control we have is over ourselves. I can improve myself as a human being – and even that's not easy to do.

Most of us are taught that we can make a difference in life, that even the smallest gestures can impact someone's future in a positive way, and surely that's true. I'm not saying we should abandon those efforts. In fact, we should double-down on them in these hard times.  

In the big picture, however, the deeper truth is that very few people (and I am not among them) have actual power in this world, and unfortunately, many of them wield that power in grotesque ways.

I can write letters. I can donate money. Probably the most important thing I can do is vote in November, and you can be sure that I will.

I want to share a story with college students struggling to answer the questions, What career should I choose? What do I want to do with my life?

I was one of those students who floundered. I changed my major from Psychology to Sociology, then History, and finally English Literature.

Although I had always loved to write, it didn't occur to me that I could be a professional writer. I didn't see the common thread until someone pointed it out to me. Perhaps this was because I didn't know anyone who made a living as a writer. My father had a degree in engineering and my mother, in math and physics.

And then one day during the worst of my confusion, my father asked me, sort of nonchalantly, "Have you ever noticed that the classes where you got an A – when you were happy – always included a writing project?"

Hmmm. Truer words were never spoken. The subject didn't matter at all. History, English literature, Sociology – Dad was right. If a course had been structured around a writing project, I was in Heaven, and I excelled.

"You love to write," Dad said simply.

And then I asked what now seems like the stupidest question ever: "Doesn't everyone?"

"Why, no," Dad replied. "In fact, most people don't like to write at all. See, writing comes so naturally to you that you assume everyone can do it well. Maybe you should be a writer."

The conversation with Dad was life changing. I had always expressed myself through writing. I kept diaries and wrote long letters starting in grade school. I wrote a draft of a novel during the summer between fifth and sixth grade. Why had I not seen this as a path for my future? Why did it take someone to point it out to me?

I have no idea. I was young and overwhelmed, I guess.

I knew in my heart that Dad was right. Immediately, I applied and then transferred to a smaller college with an intensive writing program. I took courses in magazine writing, creative writing, and screenwriting. I joined the college newspaper staff. I got an internship at a magazine in my senior year, then my first job at a daily newspaper, and on and on, leading me eventually to a reporting contract at The New York Times and then my first book contract.

After a single conversation with my dad, I was able to find my place in the world, and I've never looked back. Sometimes, what it takes is the right advice from the right person. 

My latest book, released earlier this year, is a historical thriller. This means I've now published oral histories, an illustrated children's book, a middle-grade nonfiction book, two novels set in Florida in the early 1960s - and a historical novel/thriller set in 1916 about a rogue shark that upended the Jersey Shore.

I was scared to write a thriller. I was scared to write about a great white shark. But I did it anyway.

The pacing is different in a thriller. The book has to move forward with the speed of light. There were other challenges as well. 

Why did I do it? Because I wanted to write in a way that was new to me. I wanted to remember what it was like to try something for the first time.  

I've never been content with staying in my lane, so to speak. As a newspaper reporter early in my career, my favorite beat was general assignment. When you tell people that you were a general assignment reporter, they don't really get it. For some reason, they think it sounds boring or routine. It is the opposite, however. You have to be able to cover any story at a moment's notice. You might be sent to a board meeting of a public hospital or to a press conference given by a city police chief. You might be dispatched to cover a court case, perhaps filling in for a reporter who had been following the case for weeks or even months. You have to land on your feet. 

I like a challenge.

I don't know what I'm going to write next. And that, to me, is part of the adventure. 

The best things in life happen when we embrace risk. It's when we take chances that we find out who we really are. When we stay in our safe places, comforted by routine, our senses become dulled, and we never have the experience of flying high.

His name was Jonathan. He was a cultural anthropologist, a musician, a free spirit. He was a father, husband, and friend.

He was my brother.

It started with a phone call on a Monday morning in July 2021. Jonathan was in the hospital. He'd had a seizure the night before. This, in itself, raised alarm bells. I knew he had no history of seizures, and yet he'd had one that was so severe that he fell and ripped apart his shoulder. At the hospital, a scan showed "something" in his brain. He would be having brain surgery that afternoon.

It was my sister who called me, and she spoke slowly and carefully. Still, three words - seizure, scan, surgery - felt like three quick slaps to my face.

The surgery went on for hours. When it was over, we would learn that "something" in his brain had a name: Glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor. 

With optimal care, Jonathan's prognosis was 12-14 months. With no treatment, he could expect to live four months.

He decided to fight it. He lived for 23 months, almost twice as long as predicted. He went into a final decline last spring, and died June 24. 

All is quiet now. Those of us who loved him are bereft and exhausted. We are like survivors of a crash, stunned and awaiting rescue.

While my historical novel, Silent Came the Monster, is the story of the infamous 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks, the focus is on the people whose lives were impacted by the shark in some way, with an emphasis on resilience, love, grief - and tremendous courage.

Imagine this real-life scene as described by multiple witnesses in Beach Haven, the site of the first attack: Lifeguards and bystanders raced into the surf to pull a swimmer from the jaws of a terrifying "sea monster." Since it was widely believed, even by scientists, that "man-eating" sharks didn't swim in the waters off New Jersey or New York at all, witnesses were not only terrified, they were bewildered. Not knowing what the creature was, I'm sure, made it that much scarier.

The lifeguards were young, just as they often are today. And yet, they didn't hesitate for a second. Neither did the wealthy gentlemen from Philadelphia, many of them dressed in formal dinner clothes, who realized something terrible was happening. The lifeguards, hanging onto the victim by his arms, were joined by the gentlemen, and together they created a human chain as they tried with all their might to keep the victim from being pulled beneath the waves.

It was man – or men – against beast.

When I read the accounts of this tragic event and the others that followed as the shark moved up the coast, I was moved to tears by these extraordinary demonstrations of selflessness and bravery. This is why I dedicated the book to "the rescuers, lifeguards, and heroes who rush toward danger at their own peril. You represent the best of humankind."

I want them to be remembered.

When terrible things happen, there are always those brave souls who risk it all. I'm reminded of the police and firefighters who rushed into the World Trade Center towers on 9-11, or the stories my dad told me about his buddies in World War II when they were in the Army overseas.

Sometimes it seems as if the world is filled with evil people who care nothing about the well-being of others. And yet, the good folks are all around us, like angels.