In the Blue Light of African Dreams
“In Blue Light, Watkins has succeeded admirably where most nonflying authors fail. He has completely captured the peculiar rhythms of men who fly…Beau Geste meets Waldo Pepper [set] to a concert of murder, betrayal, extortion, cheap cognac, and psychotic despair in the solitary confinement of the Sahara…Watkins writes beautifully.”
Los Angeles Times
Halifax barely listened when Ivan read him the newspaper article about the Orteig Prize. He was sitting on a balcony in Mogador eating Apricot jam, his thoughts a thousand miles away in a small mining town in Pennsylvania. Ivan sent the newspaper flying over the balcony like so many insubstantial dreams.
Five years agoHalifax had been shot down over Belgium, just barely surviving a crash that nearly scraped clean one side of his face and spattered the rest of his body in burns.When he was picked up by the military police attempting to board a ship bound for America, he was court-martialed and given the option of being shot or serving 20 years in the Foreign Legion. His choice brought him to French Africa.
Five years he’d been there already—five years of inertia, doing whatever foolhardy, dangerous thing Serailler ordered him to do, a pawn in a losing game, a passive stranger in an inscrutable land. It was some time before Halifax finally snapped, but when he did, he opened the throttle, eased back the stick and lifted straight and high into a fierce, fantastic dream.
Praise