Flight of Dreams
A Novel
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- USD 10.99
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- USD 10.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Frozen River, this “enthralling nail-biter” (People) of a novel brings the fateful voyage of the Hindenburg to life.
“At every page a guilty secret bobs up; at every page Lawhon keeps us guessing. Who will bring down the Hindenburg? And how?”—New York Times Book Review
On the evening of May 3, 1937, ninety-seven people board the Hindenburg for its final, doomed flight. Among them are a frightened stewardess who is not what she seems; the steadfast navigator determined to win her heart; a naive cabin boy eager to earn a permanent position; an impetuous journalist who has been blacklisted in her native Germany; and an enigmatic American businessman with a score to settle.
Over the course of three champagne-soaked days, their lies, fears, agendas, and hopes for the future will be revealed—and one will set in motion a plot with devastating consequences for them all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For her second outing, Lawhon (The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress) once again reimagines a front-page news event, filling in the entertaining backstory with passion, secrets, and nail-biting suspense, this time taking on the disastrous crash of the Hindenburg in 1937. Using the actual passenger list from the doomed airship, the author has concocted a romance between two key crew members, Max Zabel, one of the ship's navigators, and Emilie Imhoff, the first German stewardess hired for an airship. Since the definitive cause of the Hindenburg's demise remains a mystery, Lawhon has conceived a plausible explanation that involves an act of revenge against one of the crew members, who, in World War I, flew the airship that bombed London and killed an American passenger's brother. The tale is fleshed out with other characters, including a lively acrobatic entertainer named Joseph Sp h; a journalist, Gertrud Adelt, whose press credentials were recently revoked by the Nazis for her outspokenness; and the cabin boy, Werner Franz, whose trip on the Hindenburg was more of a passage to adulthood than he ever could have imagined. Lawhon threads many stories together, connecting passengers and crew and bringing behind-the-scenes depth and humanity to a great 20th-century tragedy even though we all know the Hindenburg's fate.
