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Book Reviews: Ernest K. Gann

I recently completed reading two stories by Ernest K. Gann, who was one of the best aviation writer of the last century.

Fate is the Hunter is the chronicle of his life as a pilot. Gann is an expert story-teller, and lets us ride along with him from the barnstorming days between the wars, to his service as a civilian transport pilot in WW II, and finally through his career as a airline captain. I never tire of learning of the accomplishments of the early flyers and meeting the characters who undertook these challenges, and Gann was probably the best writer who focused on these themes.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery might be regarded as the better writer of this age (and mysteriously disappearing at a relatively young age certainly helped his reputation), but the comparison is really inappropriate in any case -- Saint-Exupery was a writer who was a pilot and drew on those experiences to explore the soul. Gann was a pilot and a writer who explored the limits of the men machines they flew. (OK, well he wrote about sailing too and even the screenplay for the film "Mesada", but now I'm really getting off course, and they were both great writers and you should read all of their books right now, etc.).

A sizable portion of Fate is the Hunter is devoted to the story of a search and rescue operation for a fellow transport crew in the northern reaches of Labrador (now part of Canada). The true life story is amazing enough, but in Island in the Sky Gann converts those events to a novel that is a great single-sitting adventure. I read non-fictional account first, and that feels like the right way to approach this story, as the pacing of the novel doesn't always allow the luxury of slowing down to explain every detail.

The story became a 1953 movie (with John Wayne of course) which I have not yet seen. If you're looking to buy me a gift here's the amazon link :-).

Categories: flying books

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