Dakota Flight

About the Book

Flying rescue missions is part of George Young’s job, and he accepts the risks of a night flight through a blizzard to a remote Canadian village, despite a finicky engine. Although dicey, the long journey provides George with time to reminisce:

The lure of flight to a 17-year-old boy, proud to have earned his pilot’s license. The exciting, terrifying disruption of World War II to everything he’s known. Insane flying missions in the Aleutians, where less than ten percent of the weather is fit for aircraft or airmen. A suicide sortie after intelligence on a prototype Japanese bomber with a range that threatens US soil. The bittersweet success of a guerilla movement in the Philippine jungles. Dynamic pilots who taught George how to survive, whose dedication to duty cost them their lives. And a patchwork love, never fully realized, always just out of reach.

As he wrestles his aircraft and the storm on this errand of mercy, George also wrestles with eternal questions of destiny. What is his purpose, that he should live and others die? Is he doomed to drift, his heart hardening as he struggles to survive in civilian life even more than he did during the war?

About the Author

Paul Wańkowicz was born in Poland and came to the United States in the 1930s. During World War II, he flew as a Royal Air Force pilot in midwestern Canada, sometimes out of Gimli, the airfield in Dakota Flight. Since then he has worked and flown in many countries. He is married and lives near Boston.