Flight of Dreams

Historical fiction account of flight of doomed Hindenburg in 1937. Ariel Lawhorn uses real names but creates her own account of what really happened. She focuses on a few of the crew and passengers and the story is page-turning. Additionally, I could almost picture myself in the airship due to her wonderfully descriptive words. In the Author's Note, she includes a website devoted to the Hindenburg with biographies of the crew and passengers. It is wonderfully detailed and Lawhon drew on this heavily for her facts. It's hard not to confuse fact with fiction as the story she wrote seems so probable and I found myself becoming invested in the human beings on board.

I truly enjoyed this book! The author did so much research and used real world events and people in a way that brought them to life, sprinkled with ideas about what might have happened aboard the final voyage of the Hindenburg. I didn't know really anything about the Hindenburg before reading this book, and I didn't need to. At it's heart, this is a story about three days in the lives of a set of people, including love, intrigue, mystery, kindness, work troubles, politics, and more, all woven together with wonderful writing. The book reads as a story where you want to turn the page to find out what happens next. It is told through many viewpoints, but done in such a skilled way that it feels natural, like a shift in perspective and voice in a movie. There is much to discuss about the book, from theories over what really happened on board and how the Hindenburg blew up (which is officially unknown), the world in 1937, the role of women at that time, even the animals that were on board.