Titled after the US Air Force song, this engaging debut explores the
legacy of the Greatest Generation from the perspective of Generation Y,
the fallout of war through the eyes of a pacifist, and the enduring
human desire for love, adventure, truth, and understanding.
Pensive in the wake of 9/11, a young man--our "correspondent between the
past and the present"--launches a mission to reunite his beloved
grandfather, an American bombardier, with Luddie, the woman who saved
him during WWII. Armed only with the address on the back of an old
photograph and his grandfather's memories, the young man begins writing
letters to Luddie.
Undaunted by her lack of response, the narrator travels to Poland with
his girlfriend and grandfather. As they come closer to finding the site
where the bombardier was shot down, the letters to Luddie become more
personal and the saga of a family with a long and storied history
emerges.
Beautifully orchestrated and eloquently original, each sentence slowly
builds upon the next in a charming style both poetic and engrossing. A
tale of soldiers and saviors, of burning and bombing, of fathers and
sons and brothers and lovers, this is also the story of what we find
when we dare to revisit the past.
Born in Iowa in 1979, Travis Nichols now lives in Chicago. An editor
at the Poetry Foundation, his writing has appeared in The Village
Voice, The Believer, Details, Paste, Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, and The Stranger. Off We Go Into the Wild Blue
Yonder is his first novel.
