Until the Sea Shall Free Them

April 15, 2002
Beneath the surface of Frump's overblown, melodramatic writing style lies the intriguing story of Robert Cusick, one of only three crew members to survive the sinking of the Marine Electric, a coal ship that ran aground in the waters off Norfolk, Va., in 1983. Cusick knew that the vessel, a converted WWII rust bucket, was riddled with problems that had not been addressed by its owner. The book chronicles not only its foundering, but also Cusick's fight to expose the system that fostered such an avoidable tragedy, as Frump revisits the story for which he won two national reporting awards when he broke it for the Philadelphia Inquirer. While the account does boast a wealth of facts and details, it is undone by Frump's purple prose. In a typical passage, he writes, "And then, when Kelly could go no higher, as he tried to climb another rail that wasn't there, climb toward the sky away from it all, the sea was upon him. He bellowed into the storm with all his might.... A plaintive, savage, primordial cry, a desperate hollering for help, the sort of sound a zebra might make as the lions bring it down." Frump also employs a staccato, ersatz Hemingway tempo that quickly grows old: "The flames did not care. The steel did not care. Most particularly, the ocean did not care." While Cusick's struggle is noble, it is overshadowed and rendered ineffective by such histrionics.