Jersey Shore Magazine

J e r s e y s h o r e • F A L L / H O L I D A Y 2 0 2 2 50 JERSEY SHORE PEOPLE THE SHORE AT THE SHORE, continued from page 48 Similar to the fictional Dunne family she created, Runde was raised in Seaside Park and her family oper- ated many Seaside businesses, includ- ing wheel games, parking lots, an umbrella rental business, and Marty's Doghouse before her own father, Martin "Marty" Hughes, was diag- nosed with GBM when she was nine- teen years old. "GBM affects every- one differently, and symptoms can vary," Runde explained. "It affects the social and emotional area of the brain and differs from conditions like dementia and Alzheimer's. The per- son changes, not their memories." When she set out to write a novel, Runde noted few fictional works focused on the truths of GBM, espe- cially how the lives of both the diag- nosed person and the circle of family surrounding him or her drastically change over the course of the illness. "GBM is the most aggressive and deadly forms of cancer, and it's a dif- ficult way to lose someone," she said. "My father was diagnosed during my first year of college and passed away two weeks after I graduated in 2004." She knew she had a unique prem- ise: a story set at the shore about a family fractured by an unimag- inable medical diagnosis and how a wife and two daughters cope with Brian's radical transformation from an active runner and surfer into an unpredictable stranger before their very eyes. The novel's point-of-view shifts among Margot, Liz, and Evy's perspectives, and this storytelling device provides a glimpse into each character's intimate thoughts and the sacrifices each makes along their conjoined experience of traversing a new reality with nothing but grief waiting at the finish line. The novel opens after Margot dis- tances herself from her former group of friends she now sarcastically refers to as the "casserole bitches," due to their half-hearted attempts to help by delivering bland concoctions more so for show than out of actual concern. She has nobody to confide in and is tight-lipped around her daughters about her heartache but freely posts the truth about her situation and her anguish in an online GBM support group forum. Liz and Evy appear to be typical shore teenagers, with the adven- ture-craving Liz working at the Sun and Shade umbrella rental stand while Evy works at Sal's Sweets candy shop and falls in love with her friend, Olivia. They balance their lives with summer jobs, activities with friends, and helping care for their father, but both are deeply hurting underneath their tough exteriors as Brian's condi- tion worsens. In between working and house par- ties, Evy finds a way to connect with her distant mother by adopting an online persona of a forty-five-year- old woman in the same online forum that Margot frequents. Evy learns that Margot is thinking about leaving courtesy of the Hughes Family courtesy of the Hughes Family Katie Runde (right) and friend, Stephanie McLoughlin Wnek, working at Marty's Doghouse in Seaside Park, 1998. Runde's father, Marty Hughes, working one of the game stands he owned on the Seaside Heights boardwalk, 1998.

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