cover image Big Dogs & Flyboys

Big Dogs & Flyboys

Sam Michel. Southern Methodist University Press, $22.5 (312pp) ISBN 978-0-87074-514-0

Narrated from a hospital burn ward, Michel's lackluster first novel (after story collection Under the Light) is the tale of Adam Oney, who grows up in the shadow of an overbearing Air Force fighter jock father. When the family moves to Nevada, a young Adam makes friends with Mike, the black son of a retired jet fighter mechanic. Both boys are obsessed with flying (they call themselves Orville and Wilbur), and later, in high school, Adam and Mike play for the basketball team until a racial incident fractures their friendship. In the end, Adam's dream of flight becomes a reality, but an air accident sends him crashing back to earth. This novel will summon up memories of Pat Conroy's The Great Santini, which mixed similar elements of a military upbringing, basketball and racial prejudice to greater dramatic effect. There is very little sense of time or place here, and despite the novel's potential, Michel fails to hook the reader.