Book Stop Corner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“It’s fire and it crashing! . . . This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world! Oh, it’s crashing . . . oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky, and it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. There’s smoke, and there’s flames, now, and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity, and all the passengers screaming around here!
. . . I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it’s just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage, and everybody can hardly breathe and talk . . . Honest, I can hardly breathe. I’m going to step inside where I cannot see it. . . .”



Ariel Lawhon, an American author pens a poignant and enthralling tale based on the world famous Hindenburg disaster that took place on Thursday, May 6, 1937, as the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at Naval Air Station Lakehurst in Manchester Township, New Jersey, United States, in her book called Flight of Dreams: A Novel.


Synopsis:

On the evening of May 3, 1937, Emilie Imhof boards the Hindenburg. As the only female crew member, Emilie has access to the entire airship, from the lavish dining rooms and passenger suites to the gritty engine cars and control room. She hears everything, but with rumors circulating about bomb threats, Emilie’s focus is on maintaining a professional air…and keeping her own plans under wraps.

What Emilie can’t see is that everyone—from the dynamic vaudeville acrobat to the high-standing German officer—seems to be hiding something.

Giving free rein to countless theories of sabotage, charade, and mishap, Flight of Dreams takes us on the thrilling three-day transatlantic flight through the alternating perspectives of Emilie; Max, the ship’s navigator who is sweet on her; Gertrud, a bold female journalist who’s been blacklisted in her native Germany; Werner, a thirteen-year-old cabin boy with a bad habit of sneaking up on people; and a brash American who’s never without a drink in his hand. Everyone knows more than they initially let on, and as the novel moves inexorably toward its tragic climax, the question of which of the passengers will survive the trip infuses every scene with a deliciously unbearable tension.

The author has fictionalized one of the most dramatic as well as disastrous events of the world, the crashing down of Nazi-German airship, Hindenburg, a Zeppelin, which marked the end of era for airships. The author uses real-life names and incidents from the Hindenburg's record and made her readers once again sympathize for those long forgotten fateful passengers aboard the Nazi German Zeppelin. The author's account of the Hindenburg, its structure, its build and its history, everything has been arrested with great details, that truly brings this dead airship to life through the pages of this book.

The book opens with all the passengers going to take a trip on this massive airship from the crew members to the elite class passengers to the worker level crew. The author introduces us with each and every notable character in the beginning and the chapters of the book highlights each day until the explosion. Emilie, the only female stewardess aboard the Hindenburg is traveling with a closed heart and swears that she will not get involved romantically with any of the crew member, but Max, the navigator, is making it really difficult for her to stay focus. Gertrud, a blacklisted journalist with a sharp tongue is sure that the bomb threat is very real. Along with her husband, Leonhard, she launches a secret investigation on the mysterious American man by spying on the conversations. Werner, the youngest member on the airship and a cabin boy is falling for a passenger's daughter, and most of the times he sees and hears things that he shouldn't have. Each and every passenger's dynamic shifts towards the negative as the Hindenburg approaches it's destination.

Yes the story gives a complete vibe of Agatha Christie's infamous novel Murder On The Orient Express. The thrill is so real that it gets through the skin and sets in the heart. Although the book opens slow, as there are lots of character introduction, but as the Zeppelin takes flight into the air, the story starts to unravel beaming with puzzling facts and events, that keeps the readers guessing till the end. The author manages to make the readers feel like all the notable characters might hold a personal agenda to destroy the airship.

The narrative style is addictive and told from a third person POV for each and every character's perspective. The pacing of the story is medium and there is an air of suspicion hanging around as the airship approaches its destination. The characters are well-developed, though the names used are all real. In short, the story keeps the readers gripped till the very end.

Hats off to the author, for turning a real life disaster of the Hindenburg, which in reality never came under any official investigation to detect what caused the fire, into a fascinating as well as deeply touching story and hats off to her for paying tribute to all those long-forgotten survivors.

Verdict: A must read thriller that is based on the infamous Hindenburg airship disaster.

Courtesy: Thanks to the author, Ariel Lawhon's publicist, for giving me an opportunity to read and review and ARC of the book.
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Author Info:
Ariel Lawhon is co-founder of the popular online book club, She Reads.org, a novelist, blogger, and life-long reader. She lives in the rolling hills outside Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and four young sons. She is the author of THE WIFE, THE MAID, AND THE MISTRESS (2014) and HINDENBURG (2016) both published by Doubleday. Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.
Visit her here


Book Purchase Links:

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