cover image A Season in the Air

A Season in the Air

Thomas Simmons. Fawcett Books, $22 (286pp) ISBN 978-0-449-90739-9

The son of a WW II pilot, Simmons was raised as a Christian Scientist, an upbringing he described in The Unseen Shore . Trained to be biddable and to excel in school, he went on to hold several college faculty posts, including a position as professor of nonfiction-writing at the University of Iowa, where he is now. It was while at MIT, a school he didn't like, with his marriage and financial troubles worsening, that Simmons decided to take up flying. His decision was paradoxical because he had a deep-seated phobia about being in the air, but the choice liberated him in every sense. He came to see that his ``model'' behavior was based on fear and, for the first time, Simmons felt himself becoming an integrated person. The passages about his personal life and the people in it are very well done indeed, but those about the details of flying are likely to interest only readers who share his enthusiasm for the activity. (Sept.)