On Blazing Wings

April 15, 2011
David Duane, a fighter pilot who hires his services out to the highest bidder, is over the skies of Finland, engaged in a furious battle with some Russian pilots, when his plane is hit. Coming in low, trying to find a place to put down, he spies, in the distance, a gleaming city of tall minarets, low domes of gold, and breathtaking beauty. His crippled plane crash lands and, later, he awakes in the magical city, where, to his astonishment, he meets people he knows . . . people who are dead. Is this heaven? Is Duane lying somewhere, near death, imagining this wondrous place? An interesting combination of fantasy and gung-ho WWII adventure yarn, the story, which first appeared in the May 1940 issue of Five-Novels Monthly, is primo pulp fiction, written in an urgent style (plenty of exclamation marks and short paragraphs); but it drives the reader through to the excitingand surprisingly movingconclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)