Landing Gear

"A humorously light-hearted read with many laugh-out-loud moments. . . . Landing Gear is truly a 21st century story about holding onto family and secrets in the Internet age." Toronto Star

SPRING 2010. A volcano explodes in Iceland and airspace shuts down over Europe. Harriet, bored by her job in local radio, seizes the moment to get back into news reporting. Meanwhile, her husband, Michael, is stuck in New York and rekindles an old flame. Feeling liberated by the absence of planes in the sky, their teenage son, Jack, takes an unexpected risk and lands in serious trouble. Yacub, a Pakistani migrant worker misses the last plane out of a labour camp in Dubai. And Emily, a young TV researcher, attends her father's funeral on an eerily quiet day when no planes fly.

SPRING 2012. A man falls out of the sky: Yacub stows away in the landing gear of an airplane heading for Heathrow and crashes into Harriet's car in a supermarket parking lot. Miraculously, he survives. But his sudden arrival forever changes the lives of Harriet, Jack, Michael and Emily, pulling them away from their solitary flight paths and towards a new sense of family.

Kate Pullinger draws on real-life accounts of airplane stowaways as the basis for this highly imaginative and exhilarating story about colliding worlds, extraordinary connections and, ultimately, redemption.