IAN'S SURGE

Withers turns a harrowing real-life encounter with a hurricane into a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat novel.

The author, a meteorologist for a TV news network, was sent to cover Hurricane Ian in 2022. In this fictionalized account of his real-life experiences, Withers portrays “the horrifying physical and mental torture of nearly losing my life multiple times over the course of several hours.” Scottie, the book’s stand-in for the author, begins coverage of the hurricane in a van with a co-worker, Kyle, as cameraman. It becomes evident very early on that they’re a veteran team with many years of experience working together. It also becomes evident that the newsroom they work for is dysfunctional, which angers Scottie, with frequent Zoom-call outbursts between himself, Kyle, and the TV network’s so-called “Brain Trust,” who are repeatedly called out by the narrator and main character for having no discernable experience whatsoever. Almost the entire story is told in the first person; a few third-person chapters in the novel’s front half, which focus on three people who run a boating tourism company, don’t seem to work, though the device is more effective later on when relating a rescue effort. What starts out with the feel of a meteorological memoir becomes a nautical action-adventure tale of survival. Scottie first refers to his rescuer as Aquaman, which is humorous, though the name feels somewhat out of place as it persists. Very concise chapters, some just a sentence or Twitter post in length, help propel the action forward and do a nice job of keeping readers engaged to the end, such as this one that contains part of a real-life post from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “#HurricaneIan is making landfall now.” The novel is a bit repetitive, but it mostly works and is, at times, breathtaking.

An enthralling survival tale that reads like real life.