cover image The Magical Stranger: A Son’s Journey Into His Father’s Life

The Magical Stranger: A Son’s Journey Into His Father’s Life

Stephen Rodrick. Harper, , $27.99 ISBN )978-0-06-200476-5

Rodrick was 13 when his father’s EA-6B airplane crashed into the Indian Ocean. Though the crash was never officially explained by the Navy, Rodrick felt that his father, an accomplished pilot, was ultimately responsible. Driven to understand the man he knew all too briefly, Roderick embarked on a quest to better connect his father and his life in the Navy by spending a year and a half with members of his father’s former squadron aboard the USS Nimitz and ultimately going up in the same model his father flew. The result is an engaging and immersive look at the dynamics of military units and the dual lives servicemen and women lead, from the on-again off-again relationships military families lead between deployments to the intricacies, pranks, and mores of life on a ship, all viewed through a crisp journalistic lens that helps Rodrick separate myth from reality, including the stories told about his father’s death. (May)