In the Blue Light of African Dreams - Softcover
Shot down over Europe in 1918, decorated American pilot Charlie Halifax believes his luck has finally abandoned him. Disfigured and demoralized, he deserts from France's famed Lafayette Escadrille, only to be captured, convicted, and sentenced to twenty years in the Foreigh Legion. He serves in Africa, where, along with a motley group of convicts and outcasts, Halifax is forced to fly illegal arms shipments to the very tribesmen they have been sent to fight. But a dream keeps Halifax alive even as his companions fall to harm or misery-the relentless determination to become the first pilot to fly nonstop from Paris to New York.
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About the Author:
Paul Watkins is the author of seven books, including Night Over Day Over Night, Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn, Archangel, and The Story of My Disappearance. He lives with his family in Princeton, New Jersey.
From Publishers Weekly:
An aviator mired in the Foreign Legion stays alive by dreaming the impossible in this exquisitely understated adventure. Having fled his Pennsylvania mining town, Charlie Halifax wins the Croix de Guerre flying in France's Lafayette Escadrille in WW I. After an injury, he tries to desert, is caught and sent to serve 20 years in the Foreign Legion. In Morocco, he flies for the greedy and vainglorious Capt. Serailler, who sells rifles to the Arabs even as he fights them. Halifax, holding on to his sanity with dreams of being the first aviator to fly the Atlantic, wins freedom--and a large sum of money--for himself and his flight mechanic (a former Russian aristocrat) by threatening to reveal Serailler's gun-running to a military investigator. Back in France with the mechanic, Halifax is confronted by the investigator, who tries to blackmail him with the promise of an article about his desertion. The irony is one of many for Halifax, who already lives with the memory of his brother's accidental death and nightmares about burning planes. But his life is also a metaphor for light that blinds, and Watkins ( Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn ) portrays it with deft, often lyrical prose, culminating in a beautifully imagined ending.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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- PublisherPicador
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 0312181132
- ISBN 13 9780312181130
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages320
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