More than anything, The Cannibal Queen: An Aerial Odyssey Across America is a love story about the joys of flight.
High Point: Coonts chronicles his trip across America as an aviation version of Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley.
Low Point: When it ends.
Author: Stephen Coonts
Publication Date: 1992
Genre: Aviation
Project Gutenberg: Not available
LibriVox: Not available
Movie/TV Adaptation: None
“I like everything about flying.”
This thought expressed by author Stephen Coonts sums up the theme of The Cannibal Queen: An Aerial Odyssey Across America.
In the summer of 1991, Coonts flew the Cannibal Queen—his bright yellow 1940s-vintage open cockpit biplane—into all 48 contiguous US states. He writes about the people he meets, the airports and aircraft he encounters, the towns and attractions he visits—much like an aviation version of Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley.
Coonts also delves into the aviation-specific aspects of his journey. He talks about the maintenance issues with the Queen, the good and bad interactions with air traffic control, and even the mistakes he makes and the close calls he has during his flights.
More than anything, this is a love story about the joys of flight. Coonts made this journey in the time before we navigated with GPS and iPads. Instead, he used paper maps and relied on relatively primitive navigation methods with expressive names like pilotage and dead reckoning. His descriptions of the sights he sees and the feelings he has are also—in a good way—primitive. His thoughts about flying are not saccharine or even all that sentimental. Instead, they are expressed in a way in which many of us might relate.
As Coonts recounts, “…in biplanes and sailing vessels, the journey is more important than the destination.”
If you’re a pilot, this book will remind you over and over why you fly.
Quotes
| “I like flying. I like getting up early in the morning and looking out the window at the sky, the feeling of the breeze on my face as I preflight the airplane, the look and smell and feel of the airplane. I like anticipating the flight to come and imagining how it will be. I like thinking about it afterward. I like everything about flying.” |
| “…in biplanes and sailing vessels the journey is more important than the destination.” |
| “Our planet is a tiny lifeboat in the infinity of hostile space, yet we persist in chopping holes in the bottom.” |
| “Mountains are so big and I am so small—God must be like that. Mountains remind me of Him.” |
| “The sun coming through the gaps in the drifting clouds gives the land the look of pastels. No wonder several generations of artists have been enchanted by New Mexico. This place is enough to make Monet’s knees quiver.” |
