Unlearning to Fly

Unlearning to Fly is the memoir of a bookworm growing up in Alaska---among people whose resilience, restlessness, and energy find their highest expression in winter ascents up Mount McKinley or first descents down wild rivers. These are the flying stories of a fearful pilot who admires but does not emulate the more daring exploits of her father and friends. The accounts of Jennifer Brice---at times poignant, funny, and downright nerve-racking---are engaging recollections of deadly, near-deadly, and occasionally comic encounters between human nature and Nature writ large. The unlikely romance between her parents, the Good Friday earthquake, the Alaska oil boom, a stint as a newspaper reporter, and the trials of a student pilot form engaging chapters in Brice's remarkable life. These are the stories in which the physics and metaphors of flight---centre of gravity, angle of attack, wake turbulence---illuminate Brice's remarkable life story, recounted in prose that takes wing.