Wingwalkers
A Novel
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3.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A former WWI ace pilot and his wingwalker wife barnstorm across Depression-era America, performing acts of aerial daring.
“They were over Georgia somewhere, another nameless hamlet whose dusty streets lay flocked and trembling with the pink handbills they’d rained from the sky that morning, the ones that announced the coming of DELLA THE DARING DEVILETTE, who would DEFY THE HEAVENS, shining like a DAYTIME STAR, a WING-WALKING WONDER borne upon the wings of CAPTAIN ZENO MARIGOLD, a DOUBLE ACE of the GREAT WAR, who had ELEVEN AERIAL VICTORIES over the TRENCHES OF FRANCE.”
Wingwalkers is one-part epic adventure, one-part love story, and, as is the signature for critically-acclaimed author Taylor Brown, one large part American history. The novel braids the adventures of Della and Zeno Marigold, a vagabond couple that funds their journey to the west coast in the middle of the Great Depression by performing death-defying aerial stunts from town to town, together with the life of the author (and thwarted fighter pilot) William Faulkner, whom the couple ultimately inspires during a dramatic air show—with unexpected consequences for all.
Brown has taken a tantalizing tidbit from Faulkner’s real life—an evening's chance encounter with two daredevils in New Orleans—and set it aloft in this fabulous novel. With scintillating prose and an action-packed plot, he has captured the true essence of a bygone era and shed a new light on the heart and motivations of one of America's greatest authors.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brown (Pride of Eden) returns with a boozy and nimble story of William Faulkner and two flying daredevils who meet by chance in 1934 at Mardi Gras. Faulkner grows up with a love for writing poetry and a fascination with airplanes, country barnstormers, and carnival balloonists in Oxford, Miss. At 13, he briefly pilots a homemade beanpole airplane before crashing, and later enlists with the RAF near the end of WWI and returns home with a limp and stories of dangerous escapades despite missing his chance at combat. A parallel narrative follows Zeno Marigold, a WWI ace pilot and student of the classics, and his wife, Della the Daring, who performs aerial stunts without a parachute in a skintight, silver lamé jumpsuit. Zeno and Della are poor, living hand-to-mouth as they dupe, hustle, and barnstorm their way through the South, working their way west to get into movies. Brown packs their vagabond lifestyle with plenty of trials and bootleg liquor, while Faulkner's star as a script writer and novelist continues to rise, and, after a double jolt of heartbreak when both women he loves marry others, he marries Estelle. The final act features a life-changing, serendipitous encounter between Faulkner, Zeno, and Della. Brown crafts a heart-pounding plot, and his gorgeous descriptions of Southern terrain from the air resonate just as much. The result is both elegant and thrilling.
