Night Flight - Paperback

by Anne Da Vigo (Author)

It's 1955 in Denver, Colorado. President Dwight Eisenhower is recovering from a heart attack at a local hospital. An Italian crime family manages the rackets statewide. In the middle-class suburbs, Hannah Brightman, a lonely high school senior with a disfiguring birthmark on her cheek, struggles with ostracism by girls in her class. Her mother has died and her father, a lawyer turned lobbyist, has remarried. A pair of infant twin boys throw the household into constant chaos.

Her one outlet is her hobby, taking photographs and developing them in a home darkroom.

One frigid winter night, Hannah and her only two friends, Paulette and Rosemarie, go ice skating. At the lake, Hannah greets Kenny, a boy from their school class who may have a crush on her.

Hannah spots an attractive man in his 20s meeting in the parking lot with members of the Smalldones, the local crime family. As he's about to leave, he recognizes Hannah as a member of his church and introduces himself as Jack Graham. He invites Hannah, who knows he's married, to take a drive with him to Lookout Mountain, a notorious make-out spot.

They engage in sexual play. Jack, who is drinking heavily, confides his plan for a nebulous business venture. He rants against the president and against his wealthy mother, Daisie, who abandoned him as a child but now lives with them part-time.

Following his meeting with Hannah, Jack finds that nothing is going right. His business deal with the Smalldones falls through. Two insurance fraud schemes he's plotted go awry, and he has no money to invest in his dream of owning a car dealership.

Meanwhile, Hannah is rebuffed again by the elite girls at school. She becomes intimate with Kenny, a genial boy also on the outskirts of high school society.

Paulette's brother, an undercover police officer, pressures Hannah to reconnect with Jack after an informant confides that Jack may be trying to purchase dynamite. She agrees, but Jack manipulates her into buying a timer at a local electrical shop. She's unable to make connections with Paulette's brother, and the FBI brushes off her suspicions.

It isn't until Hannah ferries her father, Beau, to the airport for a business flight, chats with Jack's wife, and spots him at the flight insurance kiosk that she comprehends what's about to happen. Jack has put the dynamite in his mother's luggage, and the timer will blow up the plane. She drags Beau away from the gate but they are unable to delay the flight. She and Beau rush to the crash, a scene of unimaginable horror.

Hannah becomes enmeshed in the struggle of her young life: under suspicion a possible accomplice as the FBI narrows in on Jack, and kicked out of the house by her stepmother. Hannah moves in with Paulette and her kindly, alcoholic mother. Kenny becomes her lover and steadfast supporter. She turns to her photography as a diversion. It's only after she visits Jack in prison that she sees how complex relationships with her own deceased mother, her stepmother, and her young life can be resolved. She glimpses a way to move beyond trauma to build a life of love and meaning.

Night Flight was inspired by the real-life 1955 sabotage bombing of United Airlines Flight 629, torn apart by dynamite just miles from the Denver airport, killing all 44 persons on board. Author Anne Da Vigo grew up in Denver and remembers the incident-the bomber, John Gilbert Graham, attended her church.