The best-selling author of multiple award-winning books returns with his first novel in ten years, a powerful, fast and timely story of a troubled foster teenager — a boy who is not a “legal” Indian because he was never claimed by his father — who learns the true meaning of terror. About to commit a devastating act, the young man finds himself shot back through time on a shocking sojourn through moments of violence in American history. He resurfaces in the form of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, inhabits the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Big Horn, and then rides with an Indian tracker in the 19th Century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. When finally, blessedly, our young warrior comes to rest again in his own contemporary body, he is mightily transformed by all he’s seen. This is Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant — making us laugh while breaking our hearts. Simultaneously wrenching and deeply humorous, wholly contemporary yet steeped in American history, Flight is irrepressible, fearless, and again, groundbreaking Alexie.
Sherman Alexie's first novel in ten years is a powerful, fast and timely story of a troubled foster teenager who travels through time to learn the true meaning of terror. In a way, this fast, blistering novel might be seen as Sherman Alexie's response to 9/11. It's his effort to explore the meaning and purpose of violence at critical moments in American history while showing reasons the perpetrators have for enacting it and then questioning our right to judge their actions. It is a provocative and deeply unnerving book that nevertheless manages to keep you laughing throughout much of it. This is vintage Sherman - always riding the line between funny and gutting, seemingly trivial and monumentous.
