Upmarket Commercial/Women’s Fiction
Date Published: January 3, 2019
Publisher: Acorn Publishing LLC
Let pilot Tris Miles lift you up, and fly you to new heights with her inspiring story of love, ambition and the meaning of success.
R. D. Kardon's debut novel puts you in the cockpit with Tris Miles as she navigates the challenges of integrating an all-male corporate flight department in 1997. Tris encounters harassment, marginalization, and backstabbing on her journey to becoming a jet captain.
____________________________
It’s 1997. Women stand beside men in combat and fly fighter jets. Pilot Tris Miles is not content with her job as a First Officer for tiny Clear Sky Airlines. She wants to be a Captain—the only way she knows to prove her worth as a pilot and atone for a deadly mistake.
To further her career, Tris accepts a prestigious job with Tetrix, Inc. But her dream of becoming pilot-in-command twists into a nightmare.
As the company’s first woman pilot, she encounters resistance, marginalization, and harassment on a daily basis. Fortunately, Tris has one thing her co-workers can’t deny—skill.
When Tris finds herself in a crippled airplane thousands of miles from home she must prove she can lead. With her career on the line, can Tris earn the respect she’s been craving? And if this is the end, can she find the strength to forgive herself?
My Top 10
Favorite Books (as of today)...
And Why…
By
R. D.
Kardon
Author of Flygirl
While I’d hardly call this a curated list, here
are the books that have made the biggest impact on my life and my writing. In
reverse order of course!
10. The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
Best known
of course for his novel The Prince of
Tides, Pat Conroy wrote an incredibly strong, compelling novel about what
it was like to attend a military academy. I admire his willingness to be
authentic and detail the pain and anguish his characters were caused by a
system that was simply outdated.
And I
can’t hear the word paisan without
getting a chill.
9. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
I started
reading this book on a commuter train that I took to work in downtown Chicago.
Less than five minutes in, I was laughing so hard I gasped. The train conductor
came by to see if I needed assistance.
The next
day, again reading this book on the train, my laughter brought me to tears. I
was wiping the them as they streamed down my face, completely unable to stop
reading the book.
Nobody
makes me laugh like this. Nobody but Sedaris.
7. Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss
I confess
to being a huge fan of true crime books. There are so many good ones (Helter
Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi comes to mind) but this one will always stand out
to me. The book is the story of Jeffrey MacDonald, a Green Beret accused of
slaughtering his wife and children. MacDonald commissioned McGinniss to write his version of the story.
Chapter by
chapter, you can sense that McGinniss is slowly starting to doubt MacDonald,
until at the end, he concludes, as did a jury, that MacDonald was guilty.
Chilling, page-turning, brilliant. A classic.
6. How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny
Louise
Penny writes the uber-popular Three Pines Mysteries series. This is one of the
books in the middle of pack, but is so far my favorite. Penny’s writing style
is vivid, descriptive and humorous. In fact, I confess that I try to emulate
her style in my own writing. I haven’t mastered it, but I think there’s still
time.
5. Bodies of Water by T. Greenwood
T.
Greenwood is a superb writer of fiction who has published twelve novels. While
her most popular to date is the 2018 release, Rust & Stardust, this 2012 novel is my favorite of her books.
The themes
of true love, abuse, bad choices and how the passage of time diminishes nothing
come to life in this tale of two housewives in bad marriages who fall in love…
with each other. It’s a timeless romance and story of perseverance that I get
something new out of every time I read it.
4. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
This book
was very popular when it first came out, and was skyrocketed to the top of the
charts when Oprah Winfrey tagged it for her book club. And the honors were
well-deserved. What struck me most about this book was the incongruity,
randomness and timelessness of the relationship between the main characters.
4. Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
Don’t get
me wrong-- I love all of Naylor’s books. The
Women of Brewster Place is probably her best known, but, to me, Mama Day is her crowning achievement.
It’s a love story which digs into the readers feelings at every level, and, in
some senses, a ghost story.
For me, it
was the first time I understood the impact of death beyond what it might have
meant to me alone. And I try to honor that lesson, and Ms. Naylor, in my book, Flygirl.
I never
thought I’d enjoy a book that weighed so heavily on mysticism and other
worldliness.
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
This one
is probably on everyone else’s favorite list. The story is compelling, the
characters unforgettable. My second favorite character in literature (see the
first in my #1 entry) is Henrietta DuBose. Seemingly a throw-away story, maybe a
character meant to enhance our understanding of Jem and Scout, Mrs. DuBose
teaches us an important lesson about endurance. An old woman apparently close
to death, her goal is to make sure she beats her addiction to painkillers
before she dies.
A metaphor
for not taking the easy way out, Mrs. DuBose adds color, texture and meaning to
the story.
2. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Unexpected,
riveting, unique, once-in-a-lifetime story which runs the gamut of every human
foible and emotion. And ends where all stories should-- with love.
Tartt is
second only to McMurtry, in my humble opinion, in the ability to create deeply
relatable characters, and get us to engage with people who are nothing like us.
I’m frequently told the amiable and fearless Boris is a favorite character of
readers, even those he’s mostly a foil for the main character.
This book
is practically perfect.
1.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
When I
first picked up this paperback in 1986, I had no idea why. It was a story about
a cattle drive, way back in the days of the old Texas Rangers. I hated Texas.
And I wasn’t too fond of cows.
But read
it I did, and it quickly became my all-time favorite novel. It still is.
McMurtry developed characters in a fashion and with a depth I have yet to see
matched in any book I’ve read in the last 30 years. I defy anyone to read this
book-- it’s a long one-- and come away feeling anything less than empathy for
the characters. All of them.
My
favorite character in literature is Captain Woodrow F. Call. Simple. Complex.
Engaging. Off-putting. There is no one else like him.
About the Author
Robin "R.D." Kardon was a litigation attorney before beginning a twelve-year flying career as a corporate and airline pilot. She holds an Airline Transport Pilot certificate and three Captain qualifications. Her travels took her all over the world in every type of airplane from small single-engine Cessnas to the Boeing 737. Robin earned her B.A. in Journalism and Sociology from NYU and J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law. A native New Yorker, Robin now lives in San Diego, California with her beloved rescue pets. , a work of fiction inspired by her own aviation experience, is her first novel.
Contact Links
Purchase Links
1 Σχόλια
Thanks for hosting
ΑπάντησηΔιαγραφή