Amateur surfers will consider this inspiring book required reading. It gives an intriguing window into Hawai'i surf culture, specifically the surf culture of Kaua'i.
Bethany Hamilton was a thirteen-year-old up-and-coming competitive shortboarder when she lost nearly her entire left arm in a sudden shark attack. This autobiography was first released a year or so after the attack, and then re-released with additional commentary some eight years later when a biopic came out about her story.
It's easy to understand why Bethany might really agonize over the "what might have beens," given all the coincidences, good and bad, that hit her that day. The day of the accident she almost didn't even surf! The conditions were terrible, and she went from one break to another, disappointed, before finally deciding to paddle out at Tunnels, not even one of her favorite breaks.
Chapter 5 describes the attack. Amazingly, she felt no pain when it happened: she saw her arm had been bitten off nearly to the shoulder, and then said to her friend, "I just got attacked by a shark." A quick-witted father of her friend tied his rashguard around what was left of her arm to stop the bleeding. This chapter is gripping.
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Chapters 6 and 7 deal with the immediate aftermath, and still more striking coincidences--including the fact that the moment Bethany's father learned about her accident, he was at the same hospital she was headed to, in the very same OR, about to have knee surgery. Note also the huge stroke of good luck that the ER doctor on duty at the time had handled a foot amputation of another shark victim a few years earlier, so he knew what he was doing.
We also see Bethany's physical and psychological journey: she experiences her first phantom pain (which weirded her out then and still bothers her to this day); we see her figure out how to turn off all the beeping and buzzing machines she was hooked up in her hospital room to so she could actually get some sleep; how the hospital had to station security guards outside her door to keep out the media as well as uninvited visitors; how she was revolted when she finally saw her arm post-surgery, and instantly assumed she'd never surf again.
The reader is invited into a quite striking discussion between Bethany and the hospital psychologist, who became blind due to a degenerative disease and who actually preferred his condition because it made him better able to help people. Over time, she came to understand exactly what he meant. Finally it's extraordinary to see how her surgeon offers his post-surgery report and prognosis to Bethany and her family: it's realistic and framed flawlessly. "The list of what Bethany will have to do differently is long; the list of what she will be unable to do is short." Talk about saying exactly the right thing to your patient.
She feels blessed on many levels. Clearly this young woman has a great compass and a good head on her shoulders. "I have to look at the big picture," she says. And there is quite a lot of discussion of her Christian faith throughout the book, something refreshing to see in the post-poz media era that usually mocks or ruthlessly suppresses things like this.
A (very) minor criticism. This book is clearly not written by Bethany Hamilton, one shouldn't expect it to be. Rather, it was written by co-authors Sheryl Berk and Rick Bundschuh, based on interviews with Bethany. That's fine: many excellent autobiographies are co-written or even fully ghost-written.[1] The part that occasionally grates on the readers' eyes is when the authors, using Bethany's first person voice, use complex sentences structures, foreshadowing, or other devices to build tension across chapters. Yes, it helps lead the reader along, but it also comes across as odd-sounding to hear these types of devices "spoken" by a young teen. Again, it's a minor, minor criticism.
Finally, a few extra bonuses for readers, especially those readers curious about Hawai'i, about surf culture, or both. We learn her favorite surf breaks (including Hanalei Pier as well as Pine Trees on Kaua'i, and, interestingly, Popoya-Santana, in Nicaragua). We learn elements of Hawaiian culture, including who the Menehunes are (a race of little people in Hawaiian folklore). And we learn about Father (now Saint) Damien, a Christian missionary who requested assignment to the leper colony on Moloka'i, staying there until he too succumbed to leprosy.
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." [Jeremiah 29:11]
Footnote:
[1] See for example Andre Agassi's incredible autobiography Open, or Mike Tyson's excellent autobiography Undisputed Truth.
[Readers, as always, what follows are my notes and reactions to the book--they are here to help me order my thinking and better remember what I read. They're short this time, so feel free to skim or skip them.]
Notes:
* Bethany's dad actually grew up surfing at Ocean City, New Jersey year round--even in the dead of winter; in Vietnam he met a surfer from Hawaii, and after two semesters trying to make a go at college, he drops out, boards a one-way flight to Hawaii and ends up in Hanalei, Kauai, up squatting with a bunch of other people living in tents and tree houses on land owned by a relative of actress Elizabeth Taylor. [Wow.] Anecdotes here about her father's job at the old Kauai Surf Hotel in Lihue: he had to hitchhike to back and forth to work, and some nights he didn't get all the way home, so he would sometimes sleep in a local church on the pews.
* Interesting comments on Bethany's ambivalence on being a celebrity. "Sometimes you make a choice and you don't understand exactly everything that goes with it."
* "I try not to make a big soap opera out of the shark attack. I would rather focus on what God has allowed me to do in picking up the pieces of my old life and adjusting to parts that are new and different for me."
* She's a teenager who actually likes her parents. She grew up with two older, roughhousing brothers, so she grew up a lot tougher than the average girl. She and her family are fervent Christians, and the attack on this young woman made her faith even more robust.
* It's striking to see how everyone knows everyone on Kaua'i: even the ER surgeon at the hospital, when he heard over the radio that "It's a thirteen-year-old female and the arm is gone." had a premonition that it was Bethany: he knew not too many other girls would be surfing that break on a school day.
* Also what do you do if you're a normal family already under economic pressure because you live in Hawaii, and you have a setback like this that disrupts everything? Bethany tells the reader that her parents couldn't work for almost three months. What do you do in such a situation? The family was able to raise some money by selling exclusive interviews to 20/20 and Inside Edition. Later she's dumbstruck by all the support that came her way, both emotional and financial, from strangers sending her letters, cards, money, words of support.
* Note how the new show 20/20 (which was the first media interview Bethany agree to do), took "hours and hours" of footage to the point where she was getting annoyed with all the questions. They ended up using just 10 minutes of material. [This is one of the ways TV media, if it wants to, can easily crush your reputation: they use tactics like asking the same question over and over and over until the interviewee gives off an irritated or angry vibe--of course that will be the take that they air. You will always be used to feed their narrative about you, never the reality, and this is why it's dangerous to talk to the media.]
* Nice to see that she wasn't all that impressed with New York City.
* She also knows that her surfing alone would never have given a tiny fraction of the recognition that her accident did.
* Within weeks of the attack she got back into the water, starting off on a (more stable) longboard; at first she couldn't get up with just one arm, but then she actually did.
* Neither Bethany nor her friend Alana who was with her at the attack, have ever been able to go back to the break where it happened. Also interesting to see the (very understandable) burden of survivor's guilt her friend bears from that day.
* One of the early sponsorships Bethany agreed to do involved quite an unusual short movie put out by Volvo.
* Note that the 2011 edition of this book adds commentary from the movie/biopic about Bethany; there are various blogpost-like articles here about surfing, about "things she keeps in her travel bag," what her reflections are five years after writing the book, and her "tough moments" over the years.
* The commentary here on the biopic has its interesting moments: it's in the form of a "movie journal" of nearly a year's worth of diary entries. She talks about meeting the producers, meeting the movie staff, meeting the actress AnnaSophia Robb who plays her in the film; on her shock that Robb is only 5' 2" when Bethany is 5' 11"; also it's cute to see the some of the things an island girl will notice right away about a mainlander like Robb--like that she doesn't have even the slightest tan. Robb came out to Kauai to learn how to surf and did well for a beginner per Hamilton; also Helen Hunt, the actress who plays Bethany's mother actually does surf. Hamilton also talks about how she had to make clear to the movie makers how important her faith is and how that needs to be in the movie, that the bikinis that the actresses wear shouldn't be too revealing, that there wouldn't be any "immoral" themes in the movie, etc. [Good for her.]