The Great Blue Yonder by Alex Shearer is the quirky, gentle journey of a boy stuck between looking back, and moving on. 'You'll be sorry when I'm dead.' That's what Harry said to his sister, before the incident with the lorry. And now he is just that – dead. And he wishes more than anything that he hadn't said it. He wishes he could say sorry. And say goodbye to everyone he left behind – his mum, his dad, his best friend Pete. . . even Jelly Donkins, the class bully. Now he's on the Other Side, waiting to move on to the Great Blue Yonder. But he doesn't know how to get there – until he meets Arthur, a small boy in a top hat who's been dead for years, who helps him say goodbye. . .
Titled after the US Air Force song, this engaging debut explores the legacy of the Greatest Generation from the perspective of Generation Y, the fallout of war through the eyes of a pacifist, and the enduring human desire for love, adventure, truth, and understanding. Pensive in the wake of 9/11, a young man—our “correspondent between the past and the present”—launches a mission to reunite his beloved grandfather, an American bombardier, with Luddie, the woman who saved him during WWII. Armed only with the address on the back of an old photograph and his grandfather’s memories, the young man begins writing letters to Luddie. Undaunted by her lack of response, the narrator travels to Poland with his girlfriend and grandfather. As they come closer to finding the site where the bombardier was shot down, the letters to Luddie become more personal and the saga of a family with a long and storied history emerges. Beautifully orchestrated and eloquently original, each sentence slowly builds upon the next in a charming style both poetic and engrossing. A tale of soldiers and saviors, of burning and bombing, of fathers and sons and brothers and lovers, this is also the story of what we find when we dare to revisit the past. Born in Iowa in 1979, Travis Nichols now lives in Chicago. An editor at the Poetry Foundation, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Believer, Details, Paste, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and The Stranger. Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder is his first novel.
Over 650 Vietnam War novels have been published, mostly dark tales from the war zone. In Wild Blue Yonder, Airman Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers goes not to Vietnam but Germany, straight into a military Catch-22. His assignment: writing stories for the Stars and Stripes newspaper that will never see print. Nate's adventure deepens as he and his fellow troops try to understand why they're there, the military mindset, and the massive social disruption roiling 1960's America. Existential, psychedelic, funny, and laced with rock 'n' roll, Wild Blue Yonder is the story of Nate's quest for personal and spiritual values while trying to learn the meaning of family, friendship, and the love of the girl he left behind.
"Allan T. Stein idolized his uncle, a pilot in the Great War. So in 1943, in the midst of the Second World War, he left Texas A & M University for Lackland Air Field to learn to fly. By the time he retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1969, Stein had flown everything from BT-13s and B-24s to B-52s and C-47s. During World War II, he flew missions over China and the Sea of Japan, and by V-J Day, he had participated in eight campaigns and logged 347 hours in combat. Stein later spent one year in Vietnam as operations officer for the 360 TEWS (Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron), which used refitted C-47s to monitor and locate Vietcong units. He ended his career as inspector general of the Civil Air Patrol." "Stein considers himself to have been an ordinary airman, not a hero. But he was also a seasoned pilot and a conscientious officer with a strong sense of right and wrong. After a young pilot he had certified died in an accident, Stein made it a practice to fail all but the best candidates. He was just as disgusted with the corruption he encountered in the Civil Air Patrol as he was with the tendentious reporters he met in Saigon's Hotel Caravelle." "Although he met his share of cowards and scoundrels, Stein loved to fly and he loved the air force. He was the sort of officer his superiors trusted not to make mistakes, but he was not the sort to rise to high rank. What he offers here is an account of a typical career as an air force officer, complete with its frustrations, moral dilemmas, and the occasional harrowing experience."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The 95th Bomb Group (Heavy), the most highly decorated bomb group of World War II, participated in every major mission of the war in Europe from May 1943 through the warÆs end and was awarded an unprecedented three Presidential Unit Citations. Flying the celebrated B-17 Flying Fortress, the 95th was the first U.S. bomb group to bomb Berlinùa feat that put it on the centerfold of Life magazineùand the last group to lose a plane over Europe in World War II. Over six hundred men in the 95th never came home. The Wild Blue Yonder and Beyond is the first book to cover a World War II bomb group from its inception through the present day. Utilizing interviews with nearly a hundred air war veterans, dozens of unpublished crew memoirs, all the bomb groupÆs official mission reports from the National Archives, and nearly a hundred other sources, author Rob Morris (assisted by air war historian Ian Hawkins) provides a deep tactical and human understanding of the group. Also included are the stories of the veteransÆ wives and families, who fought a different kind of war at home, and the residents of Horham, whose tiny English village was suddenly on the warÆs front lines. Intensely human, exhaustively researched, and lovingly told, this book is certain to be a classic in the field and a resource for anyone interested in the workings of a World War II bomb group.
After he dies, Chief Terry Myell has returned as a supernatural being charged with helping humans, as he deals with time travel, tries to rescue his pregnant wife from aliens, and save Earth from an invasion which is threatening its spaceships.
What Hoosiers did for Indiana basketball, this perceptive title does for the fantastic culture of basketball in Kentucky. Never before has a book looked so closely into the soul of Kentucky basketball.
My Blue Yonder takes you into author Carl Gamble's boyhood home, the cockpit of his crippled plane, and his PTSD. You fly with him to rescue men adrift on Lake Superior, refuel combat aircraft at 400 MPH over the Gulf of Tonkin, and negotiate with a hijacker while flying near Florida...
