New Travel Novel: ‘Dear American Airlines’
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 05.28.08 | 10:46 AM ET
Author: Jonathan Miles
Released: April 29, 2008
Travel genre: Fiction—the literature of “Airworld”
Territory covered: Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, the life of protagonist Bennie Ford
Promo copy: “Dear American Airlines is the scathingly funny, deeply moving story of a stranded passenger whose enraged letter of complaint transforms into a lament for a life gone awry. Bennie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughter’s wedding when his flight is canceled. Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of O’Hare Airport, he watches the clock tick and realizes that he will miss the ceremony. Frustrated, irate, and helpless, Bennie does the only thing he can: he starts to write a letter. But what begins as a hilariously excoriating demand for a refund soon becomes a cri de coeur of a life misspent, talent wasted, opportunities botched, and happiness lost.”
Critical verdict, Zagat-style: Miles “has a knack for pinning down the sort of whimsy that pops into the head of a person who is terminally grounded.” (Wall Street Journal) “Turn to nearly any page and you’ll find a funny, smart, touching, wonderfully caustic or well-turned sentence or paragraph. ... There’s a protracted, out-of-time quality to the narrative that fits neatly with a story about a guy stranded in an airport with little to run up against beyond his own past and future.” (Chicago Tribune).
Read: An excerpt.