Sara Ackerman’s novel The Shark House is a richly layered, atmospheric love letter to sharks — as well as the oceans and other animals — that unravels mysteries both immediate and deeply buried.
The Shark House is set primarily in 1998, when biologist and shark researcher Minnow Gray travels from California to Hawai’i’s Big Island in the wake of several alarming shark incidents (we also get glimpses of Minnow’s past and future through journal entries). On the island, she stays in the home of Woody Kaupiko, an old friend of her father’s, and is teamed up with a young, good-looking, and often stoned intern named Nalu. For the occasional meal and beverage, she visits the fancy nearby resort Kiawe, where she meets the alluring and mysterious Luke Greenwood, who ignites a spark in her as she’s recovering from a breakup.
Of the three recent shark incidents on the island — “While lay people threw around the word attack, Minnow preferred bite or incident … White sharks are notoriously curious, and since they have no hands, they use their mouth to investigate things” — one was deadly, one was still technically a missing-person case when Minnow arrived, and one involved a gravely injured celebrity. The first mystery, Minnow discovers, is that it looks as though the incidents could involve the same shark, which would be unusual. Worst of all, everyone seems to be waiting for the next encounter, putting pressure on Minnow to find answers.
Yet her expertise isn’t necessarily welcome to those whose business interests are in peril: she has to deal with the mayor, who calls her Miss Gray instead of Dr. Gray; the Tourism Authority; and state and local officials who want to embark on a “shark hunt,” despite Minnow informing them that it “would serve no point other than to decimate the shark population.” In addition, the waters would be no safer in the end: “Other sharks would likely move in.” Yet, as Minnow reflects, “Everyone had their own theories about sharks, and yet they really had no idea what they were talking about.”
The community’s reaction is indeed very Jaws-like (and Minnow makes a point, in one of her journal entries, of taking down the film). “Humans were so good at disrupting the natural order of the earth and its oceans without stopping to think of the consequences down the line. So it was Minnow’s job to be the voice of reason.” And this, Minnow sees, will be no easy task.
Like Minnow herself, the novel is wonderfully pro-shark. Not only do we learn more about these amazing creatures through her journal entries, Minnow is constantly correcting the media when they try to sensationalize what they call “attacks” by the white shark they call “this beast.” Her work with sharks, past and present, reveals her awe of and reverence for them, despite — due to a tragedy involving her father when she was a child, a trauma she is still trying to remember and process — knowing all too well what sharks can do. Once during her visit, alone in a kayak, she encounters a tiger shark: “Thirty yards back or so, a tall fin sliced through the water, directly in her wake … Hey, beautiful shark. I promise I’m not what you want.”
In addition to the mystery of the shark incidents, the novel ultimately also reveals deeply buried secrets about Minnow’s past, as well as the secrets Luke is hiding. The threads come together with page-turning tension as the shark hunt is scheduled to go forward, as Minnow’s time to prevent it is running out. Amid the drama along the Kohala coast is the backdrop of stunning Hawaiian landscape, ocean, and wildlife.
For readers who enjoyed Ann Kidd Taylor’s novel The Shark Club, this book should go to the top of your reading list. A series of mysteries woven into a beautiful setting, The Shark House reminds us: “We are born of sharks. From the beginning of time, sharks have swum through our lives and our islands, sleek as river stone, elusive and ever present. They are our protectors, our ancestors, our future.”
Midge Raymond is a co-founder of Ashland Creek Press. She is the author of the novels Floreana and My Last Continent, the award-winning short story collection Forgetting English, and, with John Yunker, the suspense novel Devils Island.