Peter Benchley is best known as the author of ‘Jaws’, published 50 years ago (in 1974). He also wrote a beautiful novel about a young free-diver trying to protect the marine environment around her island in the Baja California.
I first read ‘The Girl of the Sea of Cortez’ when I was eleven. I still have that copy (photo left) and used it write my Radio 4 adaptation some four decades later: both of us crumpled from multiple house-moves, finding ourselves in a changed world.
When I was growing up YA fiction was a rarity not a genre, and it was amazing to read a book with a strong teen female lead who was so physically powerful and independent. I swam with Paloma as she explored her incredible undersea world, felt the freedom and danger. I’m still fascinated by life seen through a snorkel-mask today, even if it’s just hermit-crabs marching across the silt of the English Channel. Although often the water is too polluted to swim.
‘Jaws’ was a classic ‘monster vs man’ story, and there’s a taste of that in The Girl of the Sea of Cortez. But the sea-view in Cortez goes much deeper, inspired by Benchley’s chance meeting and friendship with diver Teddy Tucker. He also had an extraordinary encounter with an injured manta in the Sea of Cortez in 1980. The manta allowed the divers to tend its wounds and to ride on its back. It stayed with them three days. Benchley became a marine conservationist, with a specific interest in protecting sharks. His legacy is continued by his wife Wendy through the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards.
‘Cortez’ was also inspired by Steinbeck’s ‘The Log from The Sea of Cortez’ a travelogue and catalogue of the intertidal sealife of Baja California. “The exposed rocks had looked rich with life under the lowering tide, but they were more than that, they were ferocious with life.” In his book, Benchley’s descriptions of its creatures, tides and weather are scientifically correct, location-specific and written with love. The sea is an ubiquitous presence, with enormous story-upturning power.
The story is also about loss, with a fractured family at its core. Paloma’s father who taught her to dive has been killed in a storm. He has left her a secret seamount, a tower of rock rising from the deep ocean supporting a teeming reef habitat. Her 15 year-old brother José is now the breadwinner, fishing for the family’s survival. It’s not a life he wants and finding a rich seamount could change everything.
When pitching a story to Radio 4 you need to answer two key questions: why is this audio, and why now?
A story with a young Mexican characters set entirely beside, on or under the sea isn’t an obvious choice. But working with independent director/producer Nicolas Jackson at Afonica made this possible. Afonica had created the beautiful documentary Jump Blue about freediving, and powerful drama The Beast with a cast of Mexican characters. It all fitted together. It was recorded in London and LA, and the cast thread Mexican Spanish through the drama, giving a sense of place and culture.
The timing was also right. The story has a new relevance with the creation of Marine Reserves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_protected_area (No-Fish Zones) in Baja California, intended to replenish fish stocks and diversity, while growing eco-tourism. It’s an investment for future generations, but it takes time for an ecosystem to recover. How do you manage the years between? For local fishing communities it can be a tough transition.
This is where I’ve placed the adaptation of the novel, in the present day as the community on Paloma’s island faces these choices. I wanted the stakes to feel real for the characters. I also wanted to capture the detail of the marine creatures, give the listener the sensation of freediving, or being out on open water in a small pirogue. A sense of what could lost.
Paloma’s grief and her memory of her father weaves through the book as a live presence, but her mother Miranda is oddly absent. The ending is brilliant, unexpected and uplifting, but leaves the young characters literally at-sea. There are many unanswered questions. Why are there no other girls Paloma’s age on the island? What was the parent’s marriage like? Why isn’t Miranda worried by her daughter’s daily absences at sea? And what will happen after the last page? Is there a world where both the seamount and the family can be saved?
As a tweenage reader I didn’t think to ask. But as writer/ adapter moving prose into drama, I had to know. The audience would want to know.
In my adaptation, the book’s last page is my first. I created a present-tense conversation between Miranda and Paloma, taking us a few hours beyond the original end of the book. The family history unfolds as the two women reflect on their different views of the past and say the unspeakable. This immediately dramatises that tricky relationship and gives the female characters connection and agency.
Which brings me to those book covers and way Paloma is portrayed. Radio cannot objectivity teenage Paloma or dilute her Mexican identity as the illustrators did, because we don’t view her from the outside. We meet her mind and see through her eyes. We feel the weight of the responsibility and loss she carries. We hear her true voice in her own language, and share the magical world she fights for.
I hope this drama will give you an experience as exciting as my first reading the book.
An Afonica production for BBC Radio 4
Produced and directed by Nicolas Jackson
Sound design by Adam Woodhams
Broadcast on Radio 4 Sunday 8th December 2024