Gretel Ehrlich. (2013). Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Gretel Ehrlich. 2013. Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Gretel Ehrlich, Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013.

Gretel Ehrlich. Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013.

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Ehrlich, Gretel
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     Gretel Ehrlich is the author of This Cold Heaven, The Future of Ice, and The Solace of Open Spaces, among other works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She lives in Wyoming.

   • name: Gretel Ehrlich

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title

Facing the Wave

fullDescription

**Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)**
**Kansas City Star Best Books of the Year (2013)**

A passionate student of Japanese poetry, theater, and art for much of her life, Gretel Ehrlich felt compelled to return to the earthquake-and-tsunami-devastated Tohoku coast to bear witness, listen to survivors, and experience their terror and exhilaration in villages and towns where all shelter and hope seemed lost. In an eloquent narrative that blends strong reportage, poetic observation, and deeply felt reflection, she takes us into the upside-down world of northeastern Japan, where nothing is certain and where the boundaries between living and dying have been erased by water.
 
The stories of rice farmers, monks, and wanderers; of fishermen who drove their boats up the steep wall of the wave; and of an eighty-four-year-old geisha who survived the tsunami to hand down a song that only she still remembered are both harrowing and inspirational. Facing death, facing life, and coming to terms with impermanence are equally compelling in a landscape of surreal desolation, as the ghostly specter of Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear power complex, spews radiation into the ocean and air. Facing the Wave is a testament to the buoyancy, spirit, humor, and strong-mindedness of those who must find their way in a suddenly shattered world.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Donna Seaman, Booklist
   • content: "Gifted, adventurous, and extolled nature writer Ehrlich has abiding connections to Japan, so she returned there soon after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami...Ehrlich's invaluable chronicle subtly raises questions about coastal disasters, global warming, and nuclear power as the beauty and precision of her prose and her profound and knowledgeable insights into nature's might and matters spiritual and cultural evoke a deep state of awe and sympathy."
2. • premium: False
   • source: San Francisco Chronicle
   • content: "As Ehrlich concludes after her nine months there, 'We can see the pain of loss and swing the other way, encountering the unexpected joy of survival.' Her own account in this brief but unforgettable book is itself a heartrending and unexpected marvel."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Huffington Post
   • content: "Skilled reportage...As Ehrlich concludes, 'We can see the pain of loss and swing the other way, encountering the unexpected joy of survival.' Her own account, both harrowing and beautifully told, in this brief but unforgettable book is itself a heartrending and unexpected marvel."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Seattle Times
   • content: "Heartbreaking...[Ehrlich's] reverence for this Asian culture allows her to add personal perspective to the vivid reporting about people whose lives and world were so utterly changed...Accompanying Ehrlich on these difficult but sometimes joyous journeys is reading that's often hard to bear, but too compelling to set aside."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Minneapolis Star-Tribune
   • content: "A poetic, heartbreaking look at the immediate aftermath of Japan's earthquake and tsunami – and all that followed...In sum, the book is a masterpiece of narrative reportage that balances Ehrlich's own reaction with the voices of the victims."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Elle Magazine
   • content: "A riveting mosaic of reportage and reflection."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Fredericksburg Freelance Star
   • content: "Brave...The language is beautiful and frail, but readers will not find a conventional ending. Instead, Facing the Wave ends with the troublesome realization that the same chaos could crash into one's own life."
8. • premium: False
   • source: Spirituality and Practice Magazine
   • content: "Gretel Ehrlich is a lyrical and sensitive writer who has written about nature and her manifold mysteries...Facing the Wave ends on a high and holy note of hope."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Santa Fe New Mexican
   • content: "[Gretel Ehrlich's] frequent theme is the relationship of people to the environment and how often harsh and ever-changing natural conditions affect their lives. Here, her focus is aftermath, how the survivors of Japan's March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami continue on post cataclysm. Ehrlich collects their stories, tying them together thoughtfully, even musically, with poetry, science, and her own observations, to achieve a sort of universal empathy that comes from unimaginable circumstance."
10. • premium: False
    • source: Kansas City Star, Best Books of 2013
    • content: "Ehrlich blends lyrical prose and astute reportage in this portrait of Japan's splintered Tohoku coast months after a devastating earthquake and tsunami."
11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      February 25, 2013
      Rarely has "you-are-here" reporting been as eloquent and searing as Ehrlich's visit to Japan's Tohoku coast. This is where, in March of 2011, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami "devastated almost four hundred miles of Japan's northeastern coast and caused the cooling apparatus of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to fail, resulting in three hydrogen explosions and the massive nuclear meltdowns in four nuclear reactors." Ehrlich journeys throughout the region with Japanese friends, meeting survivors and hearing their harrowing stories. With stories of water that "was black with diesel and gas, sewage, dirt, and blood," this book is not for the faint of heart, but memorable portraits emerge: a woman learns to use a backhoe to dig for her daughter's body; a man carries one town's beloved geisha to safety on his back. Meanwhile, an uncle of Ehrlich's friend has made his peace, observing: "I lost everything. Now I feel better." The vividness of these people and the invitation to readers to meet and know them make up for the book's one major fault: a seeming reluctance on Ehrlich's part to define her own connections to Japan and the people she clearly knows and loves there.

12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      December 1, 2012
      Lyrical, meandering dispatches and eyewitness accounts from the devastation of the 2011 tsunami in Japan. Deeply engaged in Japanese culture and history since her first trips to Japan in 1968, poet and nature writer Ehrlich (In the Empire of Ice: Encounters in a Changing Landscape, 2010, etc.) made several visits to Japan in the months after the shattering earthquake and tsunami. Moving along the coast in the company of her friend Masumi and her family, who live in Sendai, near the epicenter, Ehrlich tried simply to make sense of the unspeakable horror the Japanese experienced, recording accounts by traumatized survivors and her own poignant on-the-ground observations. The tsunami waves wrecked 400 miles of Japan's northeastern coast and caused the lethal meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, which had long needed repairs, resulting in a national scandal. Exploring the coast where Masumi spent her childhood, wearing protective clothing against radiation, Ehrlich viewed a "wild place of total devastation," where the sea wall was useless in keeping back the towering waves and entire towns were wiped out. The author records eyewitness blogs, such as by the fisherman who rushed out to sea just after the last big earthquake struck (preceded by several smaller ones) and watched the tsunami devastate his home, before being stuck for days on his boat without food. Ehrlich visited shrines that became evacuation centers and crematoriums during the crisis, and she mixes some Buddhist ideas of perishability with haiku from Matsuo Basho and her own work. Ehrlich renders the enormity of loss in a fashion comprehensible to her American readers. An eloquent attempt to grasp the Japanese experience of the "The Wave," which was "center and fringe at once, a totality, both destructive and beautiful."

      COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      September 1, 2012
      

      The author of fiction, poetry, and especially creative nonfiction both deeply observant of the natural world and imbued with personal understanding, Ehrlich deservedly won PEN New England's Henry David Thoreau Prize for excellence in nature writing. Here, she explains how a fascination with Japanese art and poetry drove her to Japan's devastated Tohoku coast after last year's tsunami.

      Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

14. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from December 15, 2012
      Gifted, adventurous, and extolled nature writer Ehrlich has abiding connections to Japan, so she returned there soon after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. With the valiant assistance of her guides and interpreters, especially photographer Yajima Masumi, she explored the devastated Tohoku coast and listened to survivors' stories as they endured strong daily aftershocks. Fisherman Kikuchi-san describes being swept into a 30-foot tsunami wave of water black with diesel and gas, sewage, dirt, and blood and dense with smashed houses, boats, cars, and bodies. Others remember running for their lives as the water surged toward them and seeing loved ones drown as entire towns were erased. Having farmed in the Sendai region for centuries, Masumi's family struggles to replant after the tsunami only to lose it all again in a brutal typhoon. Many of the people Ehrlich meets, including Ito Tsuyako, a lovely 84-year-old geisha, are determined to adapt, but others have no hope. And the catastrophe is ongoing, as radiation from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant contaminates land and sea. Ehrlich's invaluable chronicle subtly raises questions about coastal disasters, global warming, and nuclear power as the beauty and precision of her prose and her profound and knowledgeable insights into nature's might and matters spiritual and cultural evoke a deep state of awe and sympathy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

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**Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)**
**Kansas City Star Best Books of the Year (2013)**

A passionate student of Japanese poetry, theater, and art for much of her life, Gretel Ehrlich felt compelled to return to the earthquake-and-tsunami-devastated Tohoku coast to bear witness, listen to survivors, and experience their terror and exhilaration in villages and towns where all shelter and hope seemed lost. In an eloquent narrative that blends strong reportage, poetic observation, and deeply felt reflection, she takes us into the upside-down world of northeastern Japan, where nothing is certain and where the boundaries between living and dying have been erased by water.
 
The stories of rice farmers, monks, and wanderers; of fishermen who drove their boats up the steep wall of the wave; and of an eighty-four-year-old geisha who survived the tsunami to hand down a song that only she still remembered are both harrowing and inspirational....

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