Flight of Dreams (Lawhon)

Flight of Dreams 
Ariel Lawhon, 2016
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385540025


Summary
On the evening of May 3rd, 1937, ninety-seven people board the Hindenburg for its final, doomed flight to Lakehurst, New Jersey.

Among them are a frightened stewardess who is not what she seems; the steadfast navigator determined to win her heart; a naive cabin boy eager to earn a permanent spot on the world’s largest airship; an impetuous journalist who has been blacklisted in her native Germany; and an enigmatic American businessman with a score to settle.

Over the course of three hazy, champagne-soaked days their lies, fears, agendas, and hopes for the future are revealed.
 
Flight of Dreams is a fiercely intimate portrait of the real people on board the last flight of the Hindenburg. Behind them is the gathering storm in Europe and before them is looming disaster. But for the moment they float over the Atlantic, unaware of the inexorable, tragic fate that awaits them.

Brilliantly exploring one of the most enduring mysteries of the twentieth century, Flight of Dreams is that rare novel with spellbinding plotting that keeps you guessing till the last page and breathtaking emotional intensity that stays with you long after. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Ariel Lawhon is co-founder of the popular online book club, She Reads, a novelist, blogger, and life-long reader. She lives in the rolling hills outside Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus).

Lawhon's first novel, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress (2014) is centered around the still-unsolved disappearance of New York State Supreme Court Judge, Joseph Crater. Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

Her second novel, Flight of Dreams (2016) is a fictional exploration of the mystery behind the the 1937 Hindenberg blimp explosion. I Was Anastasia (2018), Lawhon's third novel, follows Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Anastasia Romonov, the lone survivor of the execution of the Czar of Russia and his family. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
The novel beautifully exploits the unique, excruciating kind of suspense in which the poor horrified reader knows from the start exactly what’s going to happen. Well, maybe not exactly….Under Lawhon’s revolving spotlight, we are introduced to a carousel of suspicious characters…so as the zeppelin cruises serenely through the clouds the earthbound reader ricochets from distrust to uncertainty to outright foreboding. At every page a guilty secret bobs up; at every page Lawhon keeps us guessing. Who will bring down the Hindenburg? And how?
New York Times Book Review


An enthralling nail-biter…Almost 80 years after the Hindenburg’s fiery end in a New Jersey airfield, Lawhon reimagines the downing of the Nazi zeppelin...[E]verything points to the inevitable disaster – but you’re still on the edge of your seat.
People Magazine


Lawhon builds the narrative on facts...then propels the story forward with the thrust of fiction. This is a novel made all the more readable by weaving its way through a riveting historical event… Flight of Dreams may be viewed as a "Titanic" of the skies. Lawhon's novel, however, needs no such comparison. It has ample emotional fuel to sail on its own, even knowing its spectacular end.
Associated Press


Lawhon deftly braids together the complex threads of her characters' stories, narrating via a keenly observed third-person voice. Her taut prose and subtle plotting create a gripping narrative, rich with historical detail and spiked with plenty of surprises even for those who know the Hindenburg's fate.... [R]eaders will find themselves unable to look away.
Shelf Awareness


Lawhon...reimagines a front-page news event, filling in the entertaining backstory with passion, secrets, and nail-biting suspense.... [She] threads many stories together, connecting passengers and crew and bringing behind-the-scenes depth and humanity to a great 20th-century tragedy—even though we all know the Hindenburg’s fate.
Publishers Weekly


The crew and passengers and some of the conversations were plucked directly from historical accounts, although they never quite come to life as real people here; the clever banter, elaborate plot twists, and period detail will be appreciated by lovers of historical fiction. —Elizabeth Safford, Boxford Town Lib., MA
Library Journal


As the disaster inches closer with every chapte...Lawhon evokes the airborne luxury of the ship...in such detail that you end up feeling a little sad that the stately flight of the Hindenberg marked the end of passenger travel by airship forever. A clever, dramatic presentation of a tragic historical event. Suspenseful and fun.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Flight of Dreams...and then take off on your own:

1. Lawhon tells the story of the Hindenberg's flight through a handful of characters. Whose story, and personality, were most clearly developed. Which characters were most sympathetic, and who did you first suspect might be responsible for the disaster? Were you rooting the survival of any over the others...or for all equally?

2. Talk about the travel onboard the Hindenberg: the meals, the cocktails, the smoking room, and the service.

3. Do a little research into the current theories to explain the cause of the explosion? How and why does Lawhon upend those theories?

4. How is the author able to create such suspense in a story for which every reader knows the outcome?

5. Do you see any parallels with Flight of Dreams and the 1997 movie The Titanic?

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)

top of page (summary)