Local author Bill DeYoung so entranced me with Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay's Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought It Down, I would have done nothing else but read it had a paycheck or work ethic not concerned me. Yes, it's that good.
We moved to Florida almost two months after the iconic Skyway Bridge tumbled when the USS Summit Venture hit one of the supports on a stormy morning. I had heard stories of the disaster but, until I picked up DeYoung's book, I had no real idea what happened.
While DeYoung explains the events that precipitated that tragic morning, he does more than that: He makes the pilot of the boat, the late Capt. John Lerro, into a real person. He allows readers to peek into the world of commercial boat captains — as the girlfriend of a captain who has to, on occasion, ferry pilots out to those large freighters, I understand all too well the dangers of Tampa Bay — and empathize with the unreasonable challenges these men undertake as regularly as most of us boot up our computers in the morning.
I meant to review this book much earlier in the year, but people kept seeing it in my house, picking it up and getting engrossed in it. I finally started reading it a few weeks ago and, quite honestly, if I hadn't had to work or sleep, would have finished it much sooner.
While I don't want to spoil the book for you, I will tell you that if you, like so many, heard rumors about Captain Lerro — the largest, I suspect, being that he was drunk or hung over when he hit the Skyway — DeYoung disabuses you of them. I closed the book with a heavy heart for Capt. Lerro and anger that the state had caused not only the deaths of those unfortunate souls on the bridge that stormy morning, but the ruination of a captain placed in untenable circumstances.
What's more, DeYoung knows how to craft a story. While a nonfiction writer, he employs foreshadowing much as a strong fiction writer would, and wastes no words with unneeded details in the interest of giving as detailed a picture as possible. Instead, he weaves the needed information into his narrative, allowing the reader to absorb the facts that propel the story forward without stopping the journey itself.
Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay's Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought It Down
By Bill DeYoung
University Press of Florida: 2013 (paperback, 2016)
Find out more about the book on Goodreads.
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 7, 2016.