Have You Read?

The Albatross

Retired pilot Gerry Hawes spent nearly 32 years in the cockpit for both Eastern and Northwest Airlines and has recently published his first novel, The Albatross, which details the life of airline pilot Jack Rheinstrom and his near-death experience and real-life struggles. The book follows the tragic departure of United Flight 811 in 1989. The B-747 was 16 minutes into its journey to Auckland, New Zealand, when the cargo door suddenly open at 22,000 feet, and nine passengers fell to their deaths.

Hawes’s inspiration for The Albatross came after reading an article in The Wall Street Journal about one of the passengers who perished on the flight—Lee Campbell, a recent college graduate who was engaged to be married. The story of the Campbell family’s subsequent struggle to learn the truth of what happened on board the flight affected Hawes deeply. The family wouldn’t accept an initial finding from three investigative agencies that blamed employee error and essentially launched its own investigation. The family’s dogged pursuit of the truth was rewarded after the U.S. Navy found a piece of the airplane and determined that the door had opened due to a manufacturing defect, not human negligence. In the book, Hawes also draws upon his own life as a pilot to give the reader a behind-the-scenes look into the men and women who make up the U.S airline industry.

The Albatross doesn’t shy away from tragedy and evokes the spirit of Lee Campbell, whose random death reminds us of how fleeting life can be. In reflective moments, the Campbells say they feel their son had a strange foreshadowing of the bizarre fate that would befall him. After his death, they found a poem he had written: “Waves hypnotizing me with green, beckoning fingers/A dream of spaceflight weightlessness/Air rushes by to fill a vacuum/ Progressive holes which must be filled.” Lee had titled the poem Was That Me?

—Reviewed by Mathew Stilphen

Softcover: 285
Publisher: Indie Author Warehouse
ISBN: 978-1-940244-73-0285
Available at: Amazon.com

This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of Air Line Pilot.

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