UNLEARNING TO FLY

A thoughtful and detailed remembrance of a life in flight.

In Roberts’ vivid telling of his life story, he was always a pilot at heart. He begins with tales of himself as a young child in love with the idea of flying before he turns the narrative toward his complex relationship with his father. Roberts’ dad moved the family to Alaska, just after it achieved statehood, as part of his own quest to be a pilot. Here, Roberts memorably recounts an oft-forgotten period of American history as industrious families like theirs traveled to a land of potential opportunity. The author also recounts his father’s abusive behavior and drinking problems with terrifying specificity. Later, Roberts characterizes his parents’ engagement with Jehovah’s Witnesses as a form of “brainwashing,” and he tells of how he languished in school, ostracized by others, due to his family’s association with the religious group. The sections set during the author’s childhood are undoubtedly the memoir’s most poignant and accessible ones. However, Roberts’ account of his long journey toward becoming a pilot will be of particular interest to those with a similar love and knowledge of flight. He tells of how he and his father formed a bond as the latter taught Roberts to fly; as the memoir progresses, though, the family dynamics and tensions gradually fade from the narrative and the author writes about his interactions with a colorful group of former pilots and roguish characters as he worked toward his own goals. In perhaps the most dramatic sections of the memoir, Roberts braces himself as he realizes that one of his flight students may have gone missing and also recounts his own dangerous solo trans-Atlantic flight. However, although these scenes are tense, they never quite reach the emotional heights of Roberts’ tales of his youth.

An initially moving recollection that loses some altitude toward the end.