Why Fly: Seeking Awe, Healing, and Our True Selves in the Sky

From the New York Times bestselling author Caroline Paul, a thrilling, gravity-defying book that takes us skyward to explore the art of aeronautics—and the depths of the human heart. 

Flying has long represented the beautiful, high-stakes human drive to invent, to explore, to experience. Caroline Paul has known this since becoming a pilot at twenty years old. Now she's in her fifties, and her long-term marriage is dissolving beneath her. She begins to fly a gyrocopter. Isn't it easier to learn a landing than a human heart?

As Paul examines the descent of love through the ascent of flight, she turns her eye to the history, the physics, and the deep impact of flying on others. From the brave Night Witches who flew biplanes against the Nazis, to the ultralight pilots who believe they can save endangered birds by becoming one of the flock, to the many people afraid to step onto a passenger plane, Why Fly examines the ways flight, like love, confounds and yet transforms us. Often we soar. But we also crash land. Still, we want to fly. Why?

"Paul discusses the physics of flight; the difficulties that make takeoff and landing precarious; navigation strategies; and techniques pilots use for not getting lost, such as dead reckoning, pilotage, and, helpfully, GPS … Though the memoir is threaded with a sense of loss, Paul has a light touch in contriving metaphors from flying. An engaging memoir of exhilaration and sadness."—Kirkus Reviews