The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska - Tapa dura

"I know that the first two letters of 'memoir' spell 'me, ' but the kind of memoir I like best is one that goes beyond being simply a personal account and instead tells a larger story. "The Map of My Dead Pilots" by Colleen Mondor does exactly that. . . . This isn't a neatly narrated, chronological account with a clean beginning and a clear end. Rather, in lyrical, impressionistic prose she relates the stories she tells of the pilots she knew--some still living and some now dead--to the myth and the reality of Alaska.It's a story of danger, of loss, of courage, of unsavory landing strips and forbidding mountains, of delivering mail and making mercy flights, of adrenaline and prayer, of unpredictably changeable winds and oncoming storms, of snow, of difficult decisions, of good fortune and bad luck, and, always, of the unbelievable cold. But it's also about why we choose the lives we do, how we rewrite our pasts to make sense of ourselves to the person we've become, what we choose to remember, and how and why we forget what we do: It's about myth-making, storytelling and memory. . . ." --Nancy Pearl, NPR's "Morning Edition" "Strap yourselves in. "Map of My Dead Pilots" is one hell of a ride, one of the best Alaska books ever. In gorgeous, literary prose that nails the rhythms of a barroom conversation and plumbs the depth of the human soul, Colleen Mondor writes a one-way ticket into the world of Alaska aviation. If Shakespeare and Hemingway teamed up to write an Alaska reality show, it might go something like this." --Nick Jans, twenty-year resident of arctic bush Alaska and author of "The Last Light Breaking" and "The Grizzly Maze""" ""The Map of My Dead Pilots "is that "other "kind of memoir--galvanizing, exhilarating, fresh. The ridiculously daring pilots of the Alaskan frontier are here, of course--meticulously rendered, artfully arranged. But undergirding it all is Mondor's own tremendous passion for a particular place and time, her enormous skills as a storyte

"Northern Exposure" meets "Air America" in this expose of the daily life and death insanity of commercial flying in Alaska "The Map of My Dead Pilots" is about flying, pilots, and Alaska--and, more specifically, about those pilots who take death-defying risks in the Last Frontier and sometimes pay the price. Colleen Mondor spent four years running dispatch operations for a Fairbanks-based commuter and charter airline--and she knows all too well the gap between the romance and reality of small plane piloting in the wildest territory of the United States. From overloaded aircraft to wings covered in ice, from flying sled dogs and dead bodies, piloting in Alaska is about living hard and working harder. What Mondor witnessed day to day would make anyone's hair stand on end. Ultimately, it is the pilots themselves--laced with ice and whiskey, death and camaraderie, silence and engine roar--who capture her imagination. In fine detail, Mondor reveals the technical side of flying, the history of Alaskan aviation, and a world that demands a close communion with extreme physical danger and emotional toughness. "The Map of My Dead Pilots" is an engrossing narrative whose gritty, no-holds-barred style is reminiscent of the works of Ken Kesey and Tim O'Brien.