Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist and memoirist Henderson (Unremarried Widow) delivers a heart-rending account of her father's death in an airplane crash. In June 1985, five-year-old Henderson was a passenger in Lamar's single-engine plane, which took off near their family's Georgia farm for a short joyride. As they neared home, the aircraft crashed, killing Lamar instantly and leaving Henderson with life-threatening injuries. She recovered from what she was told was an accident but came to learn, decades later, that foul play was suspected. In 1975, Lamar began using his plane to smuggle marijuana into the U.S. By 1979, he had purchased five islands in the Bahamas to help him safely refuel his planes and began importing over 10 tons of cannabis each year. Henderson's digging--which revealed her father's possible entanglement with the Iran-Contra affair and new details about his impending court appearance on federal charges just before his death--led her to conclude that Lamar was likely murdered by one of several parties seeking to keep him quiet. Henderson marries her solid journalistic chops with diaristic emotional immediacy, infusing a stranger-than-fiction crime story with deeply personal stakes. It's a unique, exciting, and affecting memoir. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
With a wry, sharp, and deeply personal voice, Henderson's second memoir (after Unremarried Widow) is an unforgettable portrait of her father, Lamar--a pilot and legendary drug smuggler in sun-soaked 1970s Miami. This isn't a true-crime tell-all or a romanticized outlaw tale. It's a daughter's raw, immersive journey through the myth and memory of a larger-than-life man and the fallout of his choices. The memoir is like Catch Me If You Can crossed with Narcos, complete with adrenaline-fueled flights over Cuba, hidden airstrips, paydays in Coconut Grove, and the inevitable unraveling. The detail is astounding--cash-filled safes, invisible ink, Bahamian islands, and CIA whispers that chase Lamar's story to its mysterious end. It's a love letter full of heartache, fueled by a daughter's yearning to understand the father who both enthralled and abandoned her. Henderson astutely blends the epic and the intimate. Her prose carries the ache of a daughter piecing together a shadow life and uncovering family truths in interviews, trial records, and gut-wrenching government documents. This book is about fathers and daughters, loyalty and loss, and the cost of freedom. VERDICT Exquisitely written, fiercely researched, and emotionally fearless, this rare memoir is not to be missed.--Lee Gardner
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A bittersweet memoir of loss takes a dark turn into the ugly history of U.S. covert geopolitics. Henderson, whose first bookUnremarried Widow concerned the loss of her husband in the Iraq War, begins this book with the incident that killed her father. In 1985, when she was 5 years old, a plane her father was flying crashed shortly after takeoff from their family farm in North Georgia; she was the only passenger and was seriously injured. Her father, Lamar Chester, had grown up poor not far from where he died and strove mightily to reach the middle class, first in the military, then as an airline pilot. A bit of a daredevil, Chester found he could make a lot more money smuggling drugs from Jamaica and Colombia to South Florida. Within a few years, he owned 500 acres in Georgia and several islands in the Bahamas, where he built luxurious homes with accommodations for his business' Cessnas. Henderson had sweet memories of boomeranging between estates, being doted on by parents, grandparents, stepsiblings, and the mysterious people working for the family business. As the crash grew dimmer in memory, she became increasingly bothered by the realization that her father's "business" was criminal and had almost killed her: "I want to resent him for creating a life that put both strangers and the people he loved in danger," she writes. "But I can't make myself feel any of that. All I feel is an overwhelming sense of loss." The first three parts of this book mix together Henderson's naïve memories and family lore with news stories about the legal troubles her father faced when his empire started crumbling in the Reagan years. It comes as a shock when Henderson's suspicions about the true nature of the "accident" that killed her father begin to prove warranted. Modest and restrained storytelling that packs an unexpected punch. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
