For over fifty years, Paul Bomba had a story he wanted to tell. It's a tale about Asbury Park that starts off in July of 1970 as the beach town erupts with racial unrest. Three unlikely teenage friends (Adam, Mollie, and Howard) struggle with family conflicts and their racial, cultural and class identities in the midst of the chaos. The town and those teens will never be the same.
When the smoke clears, secrets that brought the trio to this fateful time and place are revealed and continue to intertwine their lives in the years to come. The boardwalk and beaches become the setting for personal revelations, encounters with the dark side of human nature, and brushes with the supernatural.
Bomba’s story comes to life in No Lifeguard on Duty - his debut novel, which has earned several awards including the Gold Medal, 2024 Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book in Fiction, at the Independent Book Publishers Association.
The author says he tried writing fiction over the years, but life and his careers kept pushing it aside. Bomba graduated from Asbury Park High School in 1974; graduated from Franklin & Marshall College four years later, and went on to earn an M.S. and Ph.D. from Brown University. His life’s journey took him far from Asbury’s boardwalk and beaches, but his years there had a lasting impact on his heart and spirit.
“I dabbled with fiction writing, but my academic and business careers were time consuming,” explained Bomba who retired as the vice president of the research and development portfolio at The Hershey Co. in 2015. “When I got married and had kids, there wasn’t much time for avocational writing. I wrote a few short stories, but I didn’t try to publish them. After I got my Ph.D. in psychology, I was a college professor in Texas. I taught and set up a lab where I did research in memory and perception, especially in young children. I left academia for business. I worked for Warner-Lambert in Morris Plains for three years, then went to work for Hershey and stayed with them for 27 years.”
“My jobs involved a lot of written and oral communication, and I was confident writing analytically,” continued Bomba. “But I had no formal training in the craft of creative writing, so I lacked confidence in my ability to write creatively. The first time I made a serious attempt was around 2020 and I jumped right to a novel. Three years later, I published No Lifeguard on Duty.”
The book’s title has a double meaning that long-time residents and visitors to Asbury Park can relate to. It’s the idea that the folks in Asbury were basically on their own. Despite being a beach town with a great location - practically in the center of the state - the town was falling apart in more ways than one. And no one was coming to save the town.
“One thing the book covers, and Daniel Wolff’s 4th of July Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land book covers it more extensively, is that the problems didn’t begin with the riots,” noted Bomba. “One hundred years of history set the fire and 1970 was the flashpoint. The title is definitely metaphorical. The town’s metaphorical lifeguards (political and business leaders) in the decades running up to 1970 failed it. That continued in large part during the decades when the town bottomed out after the riots. At the character level, some of the people in the story who should have been ‘lifeguards’ for others failed in that role. But there is a more positive, hopeful aspect to that metaphor by the end. We see some people rise to the occasion in the lifeguard role. I like to say that the overarching message of the book is ‘everybody needs lifeguards, but anyone can be a lifeguard.’ Towns and communities need lifeguards, too.”
Bomba was not caught in the riots when they took place, but he lived less than a mile from where they occurred. He was 14 at the time and about to enter high school. He remembers seeing the smoke, hearing the sirens, and seeing the coverage in the newspapers and network news.
“The first stirrings of the idea came to me on the first night of the riots (Fourth of July, 1970), listening to them in my third-floor bedroom,” he recalled. “It took fifty years of living for that germ of an idea to mature into a story. So, I had to do a lot of research, read the old newspapers and some historical accounts. That was hard, but the whole first half of the book is based on those historical facts.”
The main characters were constructed by borrowing attributes and personality traits from people he knew. In addition to Asbury Park, the book contains scenes in beach towns up and down the Jersey Coast train line (places like Long Branch, Deal, Ocean Grove, Spring Lake, and Bay Head). Some scenes were based on real experiences; many are completely fictional, but generally containing a kernel of truth.
As with many who grew up along the Shore in the 1970s and moved away, the music of Bruce Springsteen helped keep Bomba connected to his old hometown. It also kept the idea of the book alive over the years.
“Springsteen’s music reminded me that until I wrote this book, I had unfinished business,” said Bomba. “The idea was like sand in my sneaker that I finally shook out when I wrote the book. Springsteen kept reminding me of that sand, which I guess was really in my head. Another way I think of it is that I was on a journey, driving down the highway of my life and he was in the back seat strumming and singing. Beyond that, the themes of his music are the themes of the book, so I listened to his music even more in those months when I was writing and editing.”
In an interview with the Lancaster Newspapers | LancasterOnline, Bomba mentions seven Bruce Springsteen songs that specifically spoke to the themes of his novel - "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)", "Growin' Up", "Born to Run", "Thunder Road", "No Surrender", "Trapped", and "Atlantic City”.
Bomba says there are some Springsteen-related “Easter eggs” throughout the novel as well.
In the end, the book is nostalgic. Themes of youthful angst and rebellion, the joys and disappointments of love, the importance of family and friends, and the struggles of ordinary people making their way in the world. It’s a story Bomba has had in his head for most of his life and one he’s proud to share with the world. As for his old hometown, the problems that led to the riots still linger today but he remains hopeful.
“Asbury's political and business leaders of today seem cognizant of the last 100 years of history in a way that the 1970s leaders weren’t,” said Bomba. “They understand its implications. There is a sense of the broader community that includes the Southwest, even with its lingering problems.I think there is awareness, at least among some, that the town's renaissance is fragile, that it could all crumble again unless ‘all boats rise.’ The Southwest can't be left behind. I think the town has some good lifeguards this time.”
No Lifeguard on Duty is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org, and ThriftBooks or if you prefer to buy local and want to support a non-profit in the process, it is also available at the Asbury Book Co-op on Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park.
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