Flying to Tombstone

by Gordon McBride

Jerry Hanning is an Episcopal priest and private pilot. With his nine-year-old daughter, Sadie, he migrates from the Midwest to Tucson following the sudden death of his young wife. Coping with an interior struggle over his call and his faith, Jerry searches for new relationships and a sense of purpose. The rebuilding of his life begins as he ministers on weekends in a small church near the Arizona border of Mexico. It is there, especially in the picturesque former mining towns of Tombstone and Bisbee, that Jerry becomes involved in the lives and hopes of a small group of sometimes quirky people. He also finds himself in the middle of the struggle between ranchers, the Border Patrol, and humanitarians over illegal immigration from Mexico. This sometimes brutal and violent struggle reaches a climax in this story at an abandoned airport near Tombstone. Issues of grief, transformation, ethical life, and mystical spirituality are all confronted by Jerry and his parishioners. The narrative action of the novel is confined to a single season of Lent.

313 pages, Paperback

First published June 21, 2003

Reviews

[Eulis S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

First the disclaimer: I knew and admired Gordon McBride. He was a wonderful man who wrote good novels. I don't claim to be able to divorce my memories of Gordon from my feelings about his writing, but one of the reasons I admired him was that he was a damned good writer. I own all his novels and I wish he was still around and still writing so I could happily buy more.

"Flying to Tombstone" is a good clean thoroughly enjoyable work written by a man who knew what he was writing about. The descriptions of the people and landscape of Southern Arizona are spot on. This is basically a book full of good people who can also be stubborn, prejudiced, pig-headed, and run afoul of the government. And that's just during Lent, a fact which keeps Father Jerry Hanning on his toes and in his airplane.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was in a pile of books a friend gave me. It is written by an Episcopal priest about an Episcopal priest dealing with unexpected blows from life. I enjoyed the story, which was out of my purview in Arizona. However, I was distracted by faulty editing and a sense of disbelief in the expressiveness of the main character. It seemed he was unnaturally connected to his feelings and able to process a lot of difficult experiences without connecting to God. Perhaps I am exaggerating the expectation of the presence of God in a priest's life, but I expected less psychology and more spirituality.

[Little Fish · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author of this book was an Episcopal Priest at St Philips in the Hills Episcopal Church in Tucson, AZ WHILE I was reading the book, he passed away BEFORE I could talk to him about his book.

It is about an Episcopal Priest trying to build a Church in Bisbee, AZ and the loss of the Church in Tombstone. He becomes very involved in the Border issues and after reading the book, and using parts of it as a Meditation in Daughters of the King, I grew to the point of amending my thoughts and became VERY opposed to SB1070.
How any Christian LIKE this Law and remain a Christian, doesn't make sense to me.