[Full disclosure: Frances is a friend and one of my writing accountability buddies.]
Frances Peck’s first novel, The Broken Places, explored the interactions between an unlikely group of people inadvertently thrown together when an earthquake shook Vancouver’s North Shore. Peck builds characters that jump off the page, and you root for them even if you don’t really like them. Peck finds the grace in these characters, softening their faults and making them more likeable.
Peck’s second novel, Uncontrolled Flight, is as good as—if not better than—her first. Rather than build to an inciting incident like most novels, it starts with a bang and goes from there. This makes it difficult to review without giving away the story.
It’s another busy day on the frontlines of wildfire fighting in interior British Columbia. Rafe Mackie and Will meet up at the air base for West Air and talk briefly before heading out to tackle a new wildfire start. Will flies a small plane that assesses the fire situation and guides Rafe along the path he should fly, so that Rafe can bring in his air tanker and drop retardant on the fire. Rafe and Will are close: Rafe is a mentor and almost a father figure to Will since they first started working together a decade before.
Will and his flight partner Eddie fly their small plane over a wildfire start to figure out where and how best to dump the fire retardant. They fly the route for Rafe, who’s hovering above them, then get out of the way so he can do his thing. Except today isn’t like other days. Rafe’s plane crashes, and in an instant everything changes. Rafe leaves behind Will; his wife, Sharon; his brother and sister-in-law, Sheldon and Nancy; and other characters that I won’t mention to keep it a surprise. Everything after that event explores why it happened and what was going on in the main characters’ lives both before and after the crash.
The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) is called in to investigate the crash, to determine if it was pilot error, mechanical, or weather conditions that caused the crash. Peck gets inside the nitty gritty of TSB investigations, from the wreckage stored in their warehouse that the investigators pore over, to the interviews with people who were there when it happened, to the detailed reports that need to be written for each event. The characters at the TSB are not just bit players—they’re integral to the plot, which we see as the story unfolds.
The book is written from Will’s perspective: each chapter is written from a different person’s point of view, but only Will’s is in first person. Peck divides the chapters into months for most characters, but into weeks after the crash for chapters from Will’s point of view. He’s the only one of the main cast of characters to have seen the crash happen. He is also the only person who connects all of the various characters in the book. Though it’s fascinating when the same event is recounted by different characters, reminding the reader that things aren’t always as they seem.
The book jumps backwards and forwards in time, painting a picture of Rafe and Sharon’s marriage and Will and Rafe’s friendship. The reader learns what made Rafe and Sharon leave Toronto for Vancouver. Rafe wanted new flying challenges, and felt that wildfire fighting on the west coast was what he was looking for. Sharon didn’t want to leave Toronto and never feels quite at home in Vancouver, missing her friends and sister. Sharon and Rafe attempt to start a family, which doesn’t work out and strains their marriage. Meanwhile Rafe and Will’s friendship has an unexpected depth, from installing a hot water tank together to Rafe letting Will drive his convertible.
This book is about relationships: between Sharon and Rafe, between Will and Rafe, and between Will and Sharon, whom Will visits after Rafe dies because he knows she’s the only person who will truly understand how devastated he is.
It’s also a book about redemption as, now that he’s gone, Sharon must forgive Rafe for things he did while still alive. And Will has his own secret about Rafe that he manages to keep until he connects with Rafe’s brother, Sheldon, near the end of the book, when the truth comes out from each of them and they are both unburdened. However, I found this part hard to reconcile with the rest of the book—the suspension of disbelief didn’t quite work for Sheldon’s story about Rafe’s exit from Cape Breton. It put other aspects of the book in context, but the story itself was a big ask of the reader to believe it.
Uncontrolled Flight is an unconventional novel that shifts from a bombshell beginning to a slow burn of a story, with the tension ratcheting up until the very end. Peck has written another captivating novel—I’m looking forward to reading her next one.
