Learning to Fly [Hardcover]

Penzler Pick, April 2002: An exceptionally gripping opening sets the pace for this suspenseful and original thriller from northwest writer April Henry. For those readers old enough to remember the classic 1960s New Wave French film Weekend, it will be easy enough to picture in the mind's eye the panoramic landscape of a massive, chain reaction-induced highway traffic disaster.

For others, Henry's vivid and nightmarish 14-page description is more than up to the task.

In Learning to Fly, the pileup is triggered by a freak eastern Oregon dust storm. Nineteen-year-old heroine Free Meeker is headed home--though not exactly rushing--to tell her laid-back, nonjudgmental, aging hippie parents that she's pregnant. Even more unexpected than the horrific 52-car collision from which she's walked away is the fact that the next day, before she can contact her family, the newspaper reports her among the fatalities.

"She didn't feel like a dead person--but she didn't feel real, either. Wearing only a borrowed muumuu, she was sitting cross-legged on a sagging double bed in a room at the Stay-A-While Motor Inn, three blocks from the hospital. During the night Free has gotten only snatches of sleep. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw dead people, cars cartwheeling through the air, the orange bloom of fire. Over and over again, she has flinched awake, hearing the squeal of tearing metal and the terrible boom of impacts in her dreams."

This set of circumstances is hardly enough to give Henry's plot the dense weight of dread it soon manifests. The body identified as Free's turns out to be that of a hitchhiking woman whose husband is a single-minded sadist-abuser who soon vengefully targets Free as his missing wife's rescuer. Moreover, the suitcase handed to Free by a suffering young man--he soon succumbs to his injuries--as she fled the scene of the disaster is revealed to contain nearly a million dollars that belongs to some impatient and unforgiving drug dealers.

This is a substantially loaded deck, and Free's intuitively self-preserving ability (after all, she has another life to consider) to play her own hand in response is what makes the novel, Henry's fourth, such compulsive reading. A classic tale of an innocent on the lam, Learning to Fly has the kind of plot that would have made Hitchcock smile in evil anticipation of its cinematic possibilities. And it's the kind of story that makes A Simple Plan by comparison look... simple. --Otto Penzler

After three books (the Agatha- and Anthony-nominee Circles of Confusion, etc.) featuring an amateur sleuth whose day job involves making sure people don't create any nasty messages with their vanity license plates, Henry has produced a stand-alone thriller that is far darker and uglier than any novel in her Claire Montrose series. A gruesome freeway pileup (52 vehicles, 14 deaths) has unexpected benefits for a young woman whose hippie parents named her Free: a new identity plus a bag containing $750,000 in drug money. When a passenger in her car, killed in the carnage, is mistakenly identified as Free, suddenly our pregnant, unemployed heroine has a way out of her problems and the money to finance it. She becomes Lydia, and assembles a new life in what she believes is the safe obscurity of another woman's persona. But then two dangerous men start to track her: a vicious drug dealer, who wants his money back, and Lydia's sicko husband, who wants his punching-bag wife back. In tone, mood and structure, this is a major departure from the Claire Montrose adventures, and fans may not forgive the author for depriving them of their favorite guessing game (try deciphering 6ULDV8, or CUNQRT). The harrowing accident scene (based loosely on a real event) that opens the story is very strong, but its promise goes largely unfulfilled by a fair-to-middling middle and then a predictable ending. All told this is but a passable thriller that lacks the originality readers of Henry's earlier books have come to expect. 2BAD. NYSTRY, but NTKWT.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Pregnant and single, Free Meeker picks up a female hitchhiker on her way to Oregon. A massive pile-up on the interstate wrecks her car and kills her passenger, who is mistakenly identified as Free. Unwittingly retrieving a bag of money from a drug courier's car, Free seizes the opportunity to begin life anew and assumes the identity of the dead hitchhiker. Unfortunately, the hitchhiker's angry, abusive husband and a very determined drug dealer come looking for her. Henry's fourth novel (after Heartshaped Box, her third Claire Montrose mystery) features a most interesting plot, told with easy grace, choice characterization, and mounting tension. For most collections of mystery and suspense; libraries on the West Coast may also want to highlight this intriguing Portland-based writer.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* Henry's Claire Montrose series has suffered from unevenness, but here, in a stand-alone mystery, she really hits her stride. Set in Henry's hometown of Portland, Oregon, this dynamic, hard-to-put-down suspense tale features 19-year-old Free Meeker, whose shaved head and pierced nose belie her secret wish to be "normal." Fed up with her druggie, hippie parents and the two-timing boyfriend whose child she is carrying, Free hits the road. Shortly after, a gruesome, multicar accident kills Lydia, a hitchhiker riding with Free and several others. Among the dead is Jamie, a young man who begged Free to find his gym bag, which turns out to contain $740,000 in cash. With Jamie and Lydia dead, Free takes the money, assumes Lydia's identity, and, with endearingly naive optimism, begins a new life. While Free is enjoying pregnancy and carefree living with her new roommate, two bad guys draw near. One seeks Jamie's undelivered drug money, and the other is hunting his wife, Lydia, so he can kill her for running away. As they close in on the unsuspecting Free, the suspense becomes deliciously unbearable. With Learning to Fly, Henry soars straight into the big leagues. Jenny McLarin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

"A high tension thriller [with] an endearing heroine." -- Denver Post, May 5, 2002

"A nail-biting, gut-gripping thriller, Learning to Fly is funny, hip and wise. I savored it from beginning to end." -- Jenny Siler, author of Easy Money and Iced

"A sure-footed chase novel that starts with a bang and rarely slows down." -- Seattle Times, May 12, 2002

"A wonderful collision of suspense and character about the desire to remake oneself and the danger of actually doing it." -- Jess Walter, author of Over Tumbled Graves

"April Henry’s new novel takes you on a pulse pounding ride and steals your heart in the process." -- Gregg Main, author of the LA Times Bestseller Every Trace

"Features a most interesting plot, told with easy grace, choice characterization and mounting tension." -- Library Journal, May 1, 2002 Starred Review

"Henry has skillfully crafted a real page-turner with an intriguing, memorable main character." -- James Grippando, nationally best-selling author of A King’s Ransom

"The suspense becomes deliciously unbearable. With Learning to Fly, Henry soars straight into the big leagues." -- Jenny McLarin, Booklist, Mar. 15, 2002 Starred Review