Kathryn Lyons is married to a pilot, and they have a beautiful daughter. She thinks she has the ideal life. Well, her marriage has become just a little lackluster over the years, but that’s pretty normal for marriage, isn’t it? When Robert Hart, a representative for the union, knocks on her door in the middle of the night, she knows the truth before he even says it. Jack’s plane has gone down.
Robert says near while she sorts through her emotions. Of course, denial. Shock. Horror. Her daughter goes through them as well when she wakes her up to tell her. Soon they are faced with even more – the cause is listed as pilot error.
Jack was a good pilot. Kathryn can’t imagine that anything could have happened with him at the controls. But even that is better than the next hypothesis – suicide.
Torn in a million different directions, Kathryn decides she needs to go to London, the last place Jack was seen alive. She has some clues to piece together, some information that doesn’t quite make sense. Robert goes with her, and she walks the streets Jack did when he was staying over between flights. She was nearly prepared, but not quite, to learn that Jack had a whole different life in London, one she doesn’t know if she can accept. Suddenly her memories of a happy life with Jack turn into a string of clues she wishes she’d noticed before, when she thought everything was just fine and she was oblivious.
Written in a literary, sometimes earthy style, “The Pilot’s Wife” is a story that mostly takes place within Kathryn as she deals with her conflicting emotions and tries to sort out the truth and the lies. Anita Shreve’s style is, as always, lyrical and evocative. Again, I point out there are some earthy passages, which are brief. Overall, I greatly enjoyed this read.
(This book was published in 1998 by Little, Brown.)
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