Flying
Peter Leroy
A trilogy, in which Peter Leroy sets the record straight on the subject of the celebrated solo flight that he made in the summer of his fifteenth year from Babbington, New York, to Corosso, New Mexico.
In the first volume, Taking Off, Peter builds an aerocycle, Spirit of Babbington, a single-seat airplane based on drawings that he finds in an ancient issue of a magazine called Impractical Craftsman, makes his travel plans, and departs.
In the second volume, On the Wing, he journeys across a mid-twentieth-century America populated by eccentrics, crackerbarrel philosophers, and figments of the national imagination. In a parallel contemporary journey undertaken with his wife, Albertine, the adult Peter retraces his route, misremembering every step of the way.
The third volume, Flying Home, is in the works, in process, in progress, in preparation.
“Kraft expresses an abiding faith in steadfast love and impossible dreams, [and] he takes profound pleasure in the resonance of language and the magic of storytelling.”
Donna Seaman, Newsday
“A study in disconnects — the gaps between aspiration and achievement, between image and reality, and, most of all, between the seeming sanctuary of the past and the unsettling nature of the present . . .”
Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times
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Taking Off
St. Martin’s Press (2006)
Hardcover: 224 pages
$ 23.95
Taking Off
Picador USA (2007)
Paperback: 224 pages
$ 14.00
On the Wing
St. Martin’s Press (2007)
Paperback: 256 pages
$ 23.95
Copyright © 2008 by Eric Kraft. All rights reserved. Photograph by Eric Kraft.