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Sheila Hurst grew up in Michigan and Massachusetts, contributing to a split personality involving a love of farmlands and the ocean. She has worked as a reporter and freelance writer with articles published in Cape Cod Life, Cape Cod Magazine, and Boston newspapers. Her short stories have been Glimmer Train and Writer’s Digest finalists. Ocean Echoes is her first novel.
Reviewed by Benjamin Ookami for Readers' Favorite
Sheila Hurst's Ocean Echoes touches a subject that we as humans, especially those of us surrounded by concrete instead of the ocean, don't pay much attention to: the subject of how we, whether directly or indirectly, affect ocean life in a deleterious way. Ellen gave up a life of marriage and happiness to do what she always wanted to do. To her, jellyfish are the most interesting creatures. She has always been fascinated by them, even when the people responsible for funding her research are more interested in numbers than anything else. On a research cruise set for the Atoll Islands, Ellen discovers what could be a new species. After doing a routine DNA test, she discovers something even more interesting.
I feel like I'm still there, along with Ellen and the other researchers on that research ship. I can still hear the sound of the waves and see the majesty of that thing called the ocean. The author has taken me on a discovery as much as she did her protagonist. I don't know what it is about the way the prose is written, but my mind is still filled with these images of the vast blue, divers traversing the ocean below and maneuvering through sea creatures, and the brand new species of jellyfish that added a subtle science fiction element to this novel. Ocean conservationists will want to get this book into as many readers' hands as possible.
