Synopses & Reviews
Review
Brilliantly written... The depth of reportage is impressive.” William Dietrich, New York Times bestselling author of The Barbed Crown, Emerald Storm, Blood of the Reich, and more
Review
Henderson has a novelists knack for getting into the hearts and minds of her characters, and she makes complex science not only clear but exciting.” David Laskin, author of The Family and The Childrens Blizzard
Review
Bonnie Henderson's strong voice and sharp eye bring to life the boots-on-the-ground reality of earthquake science. A valuable addition to any Northwest bookshelf.” Thomas Hager, author of The Alchemy of Air
Review
"In The Next Tsunami: Living on a Restless Coast, Bonnie Henderson has given us not only the geological history of our coast, but also the stories of the many men and women who have spent their lives discovering this history. This is a must-read for those of us who have chosen the coast to be our home and gives us knowledge to deal with the uncertainty we face here. And as long as Tom Horning lives here, I feel, I too can make it." Karen Emmerling, Beach Books, Seaside, Oregon
Review
"The book is a must-add to your shelf of Northwest disaster lit and serves a reminder for those who live on water to head for the high ground when things start to shake. You wont have time to build an ark." Knute Berger, Crosscut
Review
"Tension occupies the center of "The Next Tsunami," which is by turns a story of obsession, a geologic mystery and an inquiry into how we deal with disastersor, more often, don't."
Los Angeles Times
Synopsis
The Next Tsunami: Living on a Restless Coast is the gripping story of the geological discoveriesand the scientists who uncovered themthat signal the imminence of a catastrophic tsunami on the Northwest Coast.
Synopsis
On a March evening in 1964, ten-year-old Tom Horning awoke near midnight to find his yard transformed. A tsunami triggered by Alaskas momentous Good Friday earthquake had wreaked havoc in his Seaside, Oregon, neighborhood. It was, as far as anyone knew, the Pacific Northwest coasts first-ever tsunami.
More than twenty years passed before geologists discovered that it was neither Seasides first nor worst tsunami. In fact, massive tsunamis strike the Pacific coast every few hundred years, triggered not by distant temblors but by huge quakes less than one hundred miles off the Northwest coast. Not until the late 1990s would scientists use evidence like tree rings and centuries-old warehouse records from Japan to fix the date, hour, and magnitude of the Pacific Northwest coasts last megathrust earthquake: 9 p.m., January 26, 1700, magnitude 9.0one of the largest quakes the world has known. When the next one strikesthis year or hundreds of years from nowthe tsunami it generates is likely to be the most devastating natural disaster in the history of the United States.
In The Next Tsunami, Bonnie Henderson shares the stories of scientists like meteorologist Alfred Wegener, who formulated his theory of continental drift while gazing at ice floes calving from Greenland glaciers, and geologist Brian Atwater, who paddled his dented aluminum canoe up coastal streams looking for layers of peat sandwiched among sand and silt. The story begins and ends with Tom Horning, who grew up to become a geologist and return to his family home at the mouth of the river in Seasidearguably the Northwest community with the most to lose from what scientist Atwater predicts will be an apocalyptic” disaster. No one in Seaside understands earthquake scienceand the politics and complicated psychology of living in a tsunami zonebetter than Horning.
Hendersons compelling story of how scientists came to understand the Cascadia Subduction Zonea fault line capable of producing earthquakes even larger than the 2011 Tohoku quake in Japanand how ordinary people cope with that knowledge is essential reading for anyone interested in the charged intersection of science, human nature, and public policy
About the Author
Journalist Bonnie Henderson is the author of Strand: An Odyssey of Pacific Ocean Debris (OSU Press)an Oregon Book Award finalist and one of the Seattle Times Best Books of 2008as well as two hiking guidebooks. She has been a newspaper reporter and editor, an editor at Sunset magazine, and a writer for a number of magazines including Backpacker, Ski, and Coastal Living. Currently a freelance writer and editor focusing on the natural world, Henderson divides her time between the Oregon coast and her home in Eugene, Oregon.