"The Atlantic coast and, sixty miles to the south, the mouth of the San Juan River marked the beginning of all these journeys: here, in these unquiet, shifting waters, bred the bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas, the most willful and aggressive of all tropical sharks. Like no other shark, it possessed the ability to cross from salt water to freshwater, hunting far upriver to the lake beyond, cruising the coast, the bar mouth, and the San Juan's brackish lower stretches. The coastal and the river people hunted the shark for its fins and for its oil, feared it and revered it; every village had had family taken in its jaws. It was shark where shark should not be --- in fresh water, on human territory."

Edward Marriott attempts to plumb the minds of bull shark hunters, hoping also to experience the hardship and danger of a shark hunt in the freshwater of Nicaragua's jungle coast "with its mangrove swamps and alligators, hurricanes and stiff westers that washed up bales of high-grade cocaine, shrink-wrapped for export." The result is SAVAGE SHORE, an unusual travelogue and an eloquent indictment of relentless imperialism, conspicuous overconsumption, racial and economic prejudice, and even drug use, and their combined effect on the impoverished people of the small country of Nicaragua.

Although Marriott does brave the open waters to hunt sharks, it becomes increasingly obvious that he is in more danger from the human element. Marriott spends much of his time in Bluefields on the Atlantic coast and at the mouth of the San Juan River that leads to Lake Nicaragua. Bluefields can be likened to a rough mining town, and Marriott encounters "a bastard brew of Creole, Miskito, Sumu, Ramu, black Carib..." and discovers that each group distrusts the other and that all of them hate the Spanish, the Costa Ricans, the modern-day pirates, and the Colombians --- although the Colombian cocaine that washes ashore is gathered by one and all to use or to sell.

SAVAGE SHORE is a well-written, compelling olio of travel memoir, political and economic history, and social commentary. It is also an eye-opening account of the natural history of the bull shark --- the only shark known to travel inland --- the fear and greed it continues to provoke in humans, and the widescale massacre that has led to its current plight in Lake Nicaragua, "its crucible, its unglamorous, rough-shored, uniquely fitting home."

--- Reviewed by Jami Edwards

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