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Summary
Summary
The author recounts how he and his brother, then teenagers, piloted a plane across the U.S., and how the landmark flight drew them closer to each other and to their father, a stunt flyer.
Author Notes
Rinker Buck (b. 1950) is an award-winning American journalist and author. He was born and raised in Morristown, NJ. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick Maine, and began his journalism career as a reporter for the Berkshire Eagle, in 1973. He has since written for several national publications, including: New York, Life, Adweek and the Hartford Courant.
Buck has written numerous non-fiction books, including: The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, Shane Comes Home, First Job: A Memoir of Growing up at Work, If We Had Wings: The Enduring Dream of Flight, and Flights of Passage.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"It was the best summer of our lives and there would never be another one like it," Buck recalls in this gripping adventure story from June 1966. That was when, at age 15, he and his 17-year-old brother, Kern, flew from New Jersey to California and back in a Piper Cub that they had painstakingly restored, becoming the youngest aviators to fly coast to coast. Freelance writer Buck successfully combines details of this flight with a chronicle of the family interaction that inspired the trip. The eldest sons of magazine publisher Tom Buck, father of 11 children and a barnstorming pilot whose flying days ended when he lost a leg in a 1946 plane accident, Rink and Kern were raised to fly. This coming-of-age memoir, replete with colorful anecdotes about open-cockpit planes and their pilots, is a pleasure to read. Photos. BOMC, QPB and Reader's Digest Condensed Books selections; audio rights to BDD Audio. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An old-fashioned air adventure in the tradition of Charles Lindbergh's celebrated autobiography, The Spirit of St. Louis. Buck, who has written for New York magazine, among other publications, revisits the crowning moment of his youth, the newsworthy 1966 coast-to-coast trek undertaken with his older brother, Kernahan, in a reconditioned Piper Cub. Young Kern Buck, soon after getting his pilot's license at 17, cooked up the idea of flying all the way from New Jersey to California in the two-seat, hand-crank, tailwheel airplane, which the brothers would purchase for $300 and meticulously restore over a long winter. Rinker's presence would be required as copilot and navigator in the radioless Cub. After settling on a southern route through Texas by way of Arkansas, the brothers steered ""stack to stack"" through the steel smog along the river mills at Pittsburgh, with overnights in Indiana, Arkansas, and Texas, reporters picking them up for interviews along the way. The memorable pass through the Rockies, near El Paso, where the pilots battled oxygen starvation as they approached the Guadalupe Pass, is the dramatic centerpiece of the book. From the distance of early middle age--he is now near the age of his father at time of the flight--the author filters his impressive tale through a prism of sympathy for the passionate, damaged man who taught his sons to fly and whose own barnstorming yarns inspired their unusual feat. Says the author, who like his brother sought a way to make a place for himself beyond the shadow of Buck Sr., ""The simple audacity of our trip, our complete naivetâ and nonchalance, astounds me still."" This enchanting story of youthful accomplishment, which includes masterly insider descriptions of flight, should reach a broad audience. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In July 1966, Rinker Buck navigated while Kern Buck piloted the brothers from New York to San Diego in a standard Piper Cub (no lights, no radio, no heat) that they had painstakingly restored to near-mint condition. Kern was 17, Rinker 15, and their father, '30s aerial barnstormer turned journalist Tom Buck, 50 and starting to really feel the toll of a relentlessly active life. In the first paragraph of his colorful, exhilarating, heart-stirring account of the adventure, Rinker reveals the importance of that conjunction of ages: "What we were really doing was proving ourselves to my father." Tom Buck taught his eldest sons to fly and expected them to excel; they obviously did, which was particularly gratifying to Tom in the case of Kern, a naturally reticent, "geeky" kid. But Tom had a hard time granting his sons independence. He badgered them during their nightly calls home (Kern soon delegated calling duties entirely to Rinker, who stood up to Tom better). Using his media connections, Tom drummed up journalistic interest in the flight; the boys initially found this annoying, although Kern then got into it. At the end of their feat, the brothers were firmly reconciled to their father and to one another (Rinker had long been embarrassed by his nerdy older brother, and Kern had been demoralized by Rinker's popularity and athleticism). The journeys of miles and spirits that led to these resolutions Rinker recounts with such verve and love that Flight of Passage bids fair to become a coming-of-age classic. --Ray Olson
Library Journal Review
A journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Buck here relates the record-setting cross-country flight he and his brother made in 1966 as teenagers. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
