The Art of Uncontrolled Flight

Annie Shaw, a U.S. Air Force pilot in the first Gulf War, navigates womanhood in a man's world in this artful if sometimes inert novel from Ponders, who holds the same résumé as her protagonist. Raised by her swashbuckling, womanizing Air Force father after her mother dies when Annie is a child, Annie follows in his footsteps to the Academy, where she learns "how not to be like a woman" and makes rank quietly. In a series of linked stories told from shifting points of view, Ponders explores Annie's uneasy relationships with her father; her decent, sexy geologist husband, Dexter; the men of her combat unit; and her aircraft commander, Jago, the man she loves. The call of military and marital duty is stronger than romance for both Jago and Annie. With restrained, elliptical prose, Ponders evokes Annie's guarded, alert personality. Her stories range from tense and erotic, as when Annie—ever "one of the boys"—visits a strip bar with her crew, to more urgent and morally complicated, as when Annie's dangerous failure of judgment in the air wins her a Distinguished Flying Cross instead of a court-martial. This carefully crafted war story and romance marks an ambitious debut. Agent, Bill Goodman . (Sept.)