Preview: Susan Casey's The Wave: In Pursuit of The Rogues, Freaks and Giants of The Ocean

It's been five years since Susan Casey dropped us into the ocean with the largest great white sharks on the planet in The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks. This fall, she returns to reveal the ocean itself is even more awe-inspiring and terrifying than anything swimming in its waters.

In The Wave: In Pursuit of The Rogues, Freaks and Giants of The Ocean, Susan Casey takes the reader on a global odyssey. Chasing myths and shadows, accompanied by a constantly revolving and colorful cast of characters, and with a healthy mix of science and adventure, Casey's latest book is both scary and inspiring.

The idea of a giant, ship-swallowing wave has been dismissed by scientists and attributed to the oversized superstitions of sailors for generations. Only recently has research caught up to this elusive phenomenon. The giants are out there, everywhere.

Casey follows Laird Hamilton, world-class extreme surfer and his band of explorers as they pursue the biggest waves they can find. She also interviews those who have survived close encounters with rogue waves, those who try and predict their behavior and origins, and those who deal with their aftermath.

It's a long, strange trip. In the heart of the shipping world, we learn that ships disappear without a trace seemingly every week. For Hamilton and his crew of surf-explorers, the world is a playground of danger. Even the scientists who study the phenomenon seem awed by the impossibility of it all.

Yet giant waves are very real, leaping out of the darkness and the mist, and you the reader are right there with Casey. Holding tight on the back of a jet ski, the author herself doesn't hesitate to take you right to the edge of a giant wave surfing competition and taste her own fear.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Susan Casey is making a tour stop for her new book here. After all, the Great Plains itself used to be covered by ocean. We know quite a bit about catching big waves out here.