His comprehensive interviews with the survivors are deeply moving accounts of how humans respond to trauma, and Gonzales brings their struggles to life. This is where Gonzales is at his best, and where the account of one plane crash becomes a universal quest for courage and resilience.

Little did I know I would be reading a page-turner, one that showed ordinary Americans facing the greatest trauma of their lives, irrevocably altering the course of their time on earth.įlight 232 is many things: it is a book that bears witness to the dead, and to the extraordinary courage of ordinary people it is a thriller, with a mystery at its core: what made this beautiful plane lose an engine and then lose all hydraulic power? How did the pilots on board manage to maneuver it during that last half hour before it crashed, when, without hydraulic control, it should have been completely uncontrollable? What made the difference between life and death for the passengers on board, some of whom walked away unscathed, picking up briefcases or purses from among the rows of sweet corn, while others were crushed to death or died in toxic clouds of smoke? Flight 232 is also a science lesson on the properties of titanium: how it is made, how it is tested for faults, and how it withstands the almost incomprehensible stress of powering an engine.Īt the heart of the mystery of why the plane went down is another, deeper, mystery: why the hand of fate is so random, and how those who are spared at the edge of the abyss choose to make sense of their reprieve. But I admire Gonzales’ writing immensely, and have learned so much about resilience and human courage from his other books, Deep Survival and Surviving Survival, that I reluctantly cracked the spine of Flight 232. Reading an in-depth account of a plane crash that happened in 1989 didn’t seem like my idea of a good summer book.

I have a confession: I did not want to read Laurence Gonzales’ latest book, Flight 232.

Flight 232 by Laurence Gonzales