by Robert Kurson
In the tradition of Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" and Sebastian Junger's "The Perfect Storm", author Robert Kursten brings to life a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers (John Chatterton and Richie Kohler) risk everything to solve a great historical mystery–and make history themselves.
In the fall of 1991, two weekend scuba divers were not prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: A World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried under decades of accumulated sediment.
No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location.
Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a comradeship with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors–former enemies of their country. Both men's marriages fell apart under the pressure of their shared
obsession, their dives became dangerously daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its once nameless crew.
Robert Kurson's account of this quest is both thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the ocean's underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, more like an adventure novel, but history records that it all happened.
Review by Nan Sevic
In the fall of 1991, two weekend scuba divers were not prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: A World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried under decades of accumulated sediment.
No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location.
Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a comradeship with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors–former enemies of their country. Both men's marriages fell apart under the pressure of their shared
obsession, their dives became dangerously daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its once nameless crew.
Robert Kurson's account of this quest is both thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the ocean's underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, more like an adventure novel, but history records that it all happened.
Review by Nan Sevic
1 comment:
This was a slow to start book, but I am glad I stuck with it.. I thoroghly enjoyed it to the end... I found it to be an "edge of your seat" type of book... I plan to reccomend this book to my friends..
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