About the Book
 

A Brief Description from the Publisher

In Taking Off, the first installment of Eric Kraft's beguiling trilogy, Peter Leroy built an aerocycle in his parents’ garage, working from designs he found in Impractical Craftsman magazine.  Cheered on by the gathered residents of his small Long Island beach community, Peter readied his contraption for the adventure of a lifetime: a solo cross-country flight to New Mexico and back.

Now Peter is ready to fly, and in On the Wing, he tells the hilarious tale of his journey across a mid-century America populated by eccentrics, crackerbarrel philosophers, and figments of the national imagination.  In small hops, mostly consisting of taxiing and landing, he visits roadside attractions and unusual towns: one where every casual expression and idiom is questioned (hence a diner offering Real Diner Cooking rather than real home cooking); another where he is chased with pitchforks and shotguns by citizens still traumatized by Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds; a remote crossroads where he finds himself under attack by a low-flying plane; and finally a town near Roswell, New Mexico, where Peter becomes a phenomenon to rival Roswell’s reputation for alien invasion.  Along the way, Peter encounters other on-the-roaders, and finds himself pursued by a mysterious dark-haired girl, who continues to appear in different guises and seems strangely familiar, though he can’t quite place her face. 

And, in a parallel contemporary journey undertaken with his wife Albertine, the adult Peter revisits his long-ago journey, navigating as Albertine drives a vintage automobile through a much-changed America, and misremembering every step of the way.

On the Wing is a playful but profound novel about an Icarus who does not crash and burn, but grows older, wiser, and productively forgetful, as he reimagines his boyhood to create the story of his life.

“Sublime Tomfoolery”
Attempting a structural analysis of this sublime tomfoolery would turn your brain to fettuccini, but who cares? As its brilliant final page demonstrates, it really is the journey, not the arrival, that matters.  Kirkus Reviews  [MORE]

“Funny and Irreverent”
This is cheeky, escapist satire, funny and irreverent but — much like its protagonist — without firm direction.Publishers Weekly [MORE]

    If Jack Kerouac had had a sense of humor, he’d have left Dean Moriarty in the drunk tank and hit the road with Kraft’s irresistible alter ego Peter Leroy.
    This deliciously engaging trip of a book continues the whopper of a story begun with Taking Off (2006). That was the account of Babbington, Long Island’s own Tom Swift: 14-year-old Peter, as he attempted to “pilot” his homemade “aerocycle,” The Spirit of Babbington, all the way to New Mexico (albeit mostly via “taxiing” just above the ground). In this sequel, set at the time of the original “flight” and 40-some years later, Kraft offers two richly entertaining, if unequally brilliant, juxtaposed narratives. One details the adolescent’s cross-country adventure, during which Peter fends off cops who suspect he’s a Martian, falls for one buxom blonde waitress after another, enjoys aid and comfort proffered by his soul mates the MDMC (Muddleheaded Dreamers’Motorcycle Club) and holds fervent conversations with Spirit (i.e., the soul of his jerrybuilt conveyance). Alas, Spirit is no match for the older Peter’s splendid spouse Albertine, who accompanies and leads him by the nose everywhere, radiating a no-nonsense attitude that makes us think of Myrna Loy, Kate Hepburn and a kinder, gentler Dorothy Parker. Only Peter the elder and Albertine — who are retracing his young self’s adventurous path — would stumble upon one town that worships marshmallows and another that calls itself a museum and charges admission to enter city limits, as well as check into a motel just behind a couple who identify themselves as Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Attempting a structural analysis of this sublime tomfoolery would turn your brain to fettuccini, but who cares? As its brilliant final page demonstrates, it really is the journey, not the arrival, that matters.
    “The world owes a lot to muddleheaded dreamers,” we’re assured. Yes, but nowhere near as much as rib-tickled readers owe to the indispensable Kraft.

   This fanciful novel, the second volume in Kraft’s Flying trilogy (begun with 2006’s Taking Off) describes Peter Leroy’s solo cross-country “flight” at age 14 on a homemade aerocycle that only got airborne once, when it hit a bump in the road. Traveling from New York to New Mexico, Peter and his aerocycle encounter strange events and even stranger people. He spends a night in jail for being an egotist, visits Forgettable, W.Va., receives useless advice from strangers (“Gravy covers a lot of sins”) and is mistaken for a UFO in New Mexico. Kraft has a vivid imagination and a wry sense of humor, spoofing both the 1950s and the present in alternating chapters of a teenaged Peter on his journey, and Peter as an adult taking his wife, Albertine, on an erratic trip of remembrance. This is cheeky, escapist satire, funny and irreverent but — much like its protagonist — without firm direction.

Copyright © 2007 by Eric Kraft

On the Wing is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. 

St. Martin’s Press will publish On the Wing in the summer of 2007.

For information about publication rights outside the U. S. A., audio rights, serial rights, screen rights, and so on, e-mail Kraft’s indefatigable agent, Alec “Nick” Rafter.

The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile.