“Beneath Waves and Shadows took me by surprise from start to finish. In his first book Hooper shows himself to be a master storyteller, weaving a true tale with incredible characters — you won't forget the heroine running the lighthouse — fast-paced drama, and scenes worthy of Hampton Sides, Doug Stanton, and David Grann. The Valencia was Titanic before Titanic – and only by a few years. I kept asking myself, ‘How did I not know about this before?!’” —John U. Bacon, New York Times bestselling author of The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald

“In the storm-lashed waters off Vancouver Island, the SS Valencia became a floating nightmare: botched rescues, capsized lifeboats, and monstrous waves claiming souls yards from shore. Journalist Tyler Hooper unearths the human stories behind this disaster, known as the 'Titanic of the Pacific,' including the shocking aftermath that spurred the creation of the iconic West Coast Trail. In his riveting narrative nonfiction debut, Hooper captures the terror, heroism, and lasting echoes of this forgotten tragedy with razor-sharp prose. A must for anyone who knows the sea can scare the hell out of you.” —Andrea Lankford, New York Times bestselling author of Trail of the Lost

"Valencia sank off the Washington coast in 1906, but Beneath Waves and Shadows reframes the disaster as a hinge between memory and history, not merely a maritime tragedy. Tyler Hooper knits together survivor testimony, official inquiries, and Indigenous coastal memory into a single, immersive narrative nonfiction. The voyage—fog-bound departure from San Francisco, treacherous currents, and a fatal encounter with the sea—unfolds with the precision of an investigation and the humanity of a memoir. With transparent sourcing and careful attention to naming, the work respects voices shaped by trauma while seeking a larger truth about risk, resilience, and community. A coast-of-memory meditation that is at once elegiac, rigorous, and urgently relevant to readers who trust history to illuminate the present. It invites readers to listen deeply.

A boundary-pushing blend of history, narrative nonfiction, and coastal memory, Beneath Waves and Shadows invites readers to reconsider how disasters are told, who is heard, and how a coastline can become a shared, enduring teacher. This is narrative nonfiction that reads like a thriller and respects memory with quiet reverence." —Buddy Levy, national bestselling and award-winning author of Realm of Ice & Sky and Labyrinth of Ice