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Missing
Twelve-year-old Luc Caron sees two German planes shoot down a British plane in the skies over his village in northern France during WWI. He watches in horror as the pilot falls to his death. Luc carries the burden of being the only witness to the scene for years to come. The Greenwoods live in Canada. Their son, a pilot, has been missing for 11 years. In 1928, they receive a package from England containing a letter and three objects found at the site of the plane crash. How is the mystery of the missing pilot solved, bringing peace to Luc and to the pilot's parents? Missing is based on a true story. This novella is a quick and easy read for people on the go.
80 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 31, 2011
6 people are currently reading
99 people want to read
About the author
Frances Itani
40 books129 followersFrances Susan Itani is a Canadian fiction writer, poet and essayist.
Itani was born in Belleville, Ontario and grew up in Quebec. She studied nursing in Montreal and North Carolina, a profession which she taught and practised for eight years. However, after enrolling in a writing class taught by W. O. Mitchell, she decided to change careers.
Itani has published ten books, ranging from fiction and poetry to a children's book. Her 2003 novel Deafening, published in 16 countries, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Canada and Caribbean Region) and the Drummer General’s Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her short story collection, Poached Egg on Toast, won the Ottawa Book Award and the CAA Jubilee Award for Best Collection of Stories. She was recently awarded the Order of Canada. Frances Itani lives in Ottawa.
Itani was born in Belleville, Ontario and grew up in Quebec. She studied nursing in Montreal and North Carolina, a profession which she taught and practised for eight years. However, after enrolling in a writing class taught by W. O. Mitchell, she decided to change careers.
Itani has published ten books, ranging from fiction and poetry to a children's book. Her 2003 novel Deafening, published in 16 countries, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Canada and Caribbean Region) and the Drummer General’s Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her short story collection, Poached Egg on Toast, won the Ottawa Book Award and the CAA Jubilee Award for Best Collection of Stories. She was recently awarded the Order of Canada. Frances Itani lives in Ottawa.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 1, 2020
In the back of this volume Frances Itani shares with readers how she came upon the seeds for this novella while gathering research for another book. In the archives she found the records of an event that occurred in France towards the end of World War I and has fictionalized the facts to tell the story of a Canadian pilot downed over France by German fighter planes and the young boy who watched it happen.
Luc Caron is twelve years old, living in a small village in a part of occupied France. His mother is a widow, his father a soldier who died two years ago in the war. The village, damaged by the fighting and shelling is occupied by German soldiers who seem to be everywhere. They imposed a curfew requiring everyone to be off the streets by eight o’clock at night and groups are forbidden to meet except to attend church. There are not many left in the village. The young men are all gone, lost in the war or taken to Germany to work in the factories. Those left, the old men, the children and the women carry on as best they can, farming the fields and tending their shops.
Luc was a curious boy who liked to saunter around the village and find out what was going on, all the while keeping an eye out for small treasures. Like every young boy he liked to collect things and display them in his bedroom. The best find in his collection so far was a German coin dropped by one of the soldiers.
One day out walking about, Luc heard the distinctive sound of machine gunfire overhead. Looking up he saw two German planes and a British plane in a gunfight. He watched in awe, hoping the British pilot would get away, but knew the odds were against him. It was two against one. Suddenly the British plane turned upside down and Luc saw a dark black object fall rapidly from the sky into the nearby pond. He ran to the scene and found the pilot had landed on the ice on his back. He did not move and with just one look, Luc knew he was dead. Luc felt terrible and was crying beside the body when the German soldiers suddenly arrived and ordered him to leave. Luc watched from a distance as they dragged the body off the ice and threw it in a cart during which he distinctly heard one of the Germans say the pilot was a Canadian.
Luc raced to where he had seen the plane go down, hoping to get there before the soldiers and grab a souvenir. When he got there the plane was in pieces but he picked up two pieces of canvas, a piece from the wooden propeller and a torn card before the Germans arrived. They grabbed the torn card from his hands and once again sent him off. They did not see the two pieces of canvas or the small piece of wood from the propeller that he had hidden in his jacket.
The Germans took the body of the downed pilot to the village church and the next day there was a large funeral attended by many German soldiers and a General from a nearby village. There was even a marching band. It was a long held custom to honour pilots who died in the act of duty, even if they fought on opposite sides of the war. Following the service the pilot was buried in the church cemetery and the grave was marked with the name Jack Green RFC (Royal Flying Squad).
Luc was forever marked by this childhood experience. As time went on, the war ended and he married and had a child, Luc always remembered the pilot who he considered a hero. He knew he was the only one who had witnessed his death and felt badly that his family never knew what happened to him. He honored him by regularly visiting his grave and kept the treasures he had retrieved from the crash site.
From there the story continues revealing how Jack’s family finally came to know how their son died and how Luc connected with them many years later.
Itani calls this work a novella but to me it is more like a short story. Neither the novellas nor the short story are my favourite literary genres. They usually have interesting plots but are too short with little time or place to explore the characters in any depth and it is the characters which bring a plot to life. I think there was a framework for a great novel in this short, very moving story and having read Frances Itani’s other work, I think she would have done an excellent job if she had decided to take that route. When you consider the young boy Luc, Jack’s parent’s Peggy and Will Greenwood, John Bolten, Jack’s commanding officer, Mr. Harvey from the War Graves Office in Ottawa and even the German soldiers reverently attending Jack’s funeral in war town France, there is so much there to elaborate on and explore.
I enjoyed this effort, but was disappointed that the opportunity was not used to make this so much more than what it turned out to be, a novella instead of a full length novel. Perhaps Itani was not as excited as I was about the potential of this real life event to become what I thought it could be. I also understand writers cannot go off on tangents that might prove interesting while they are researching another book. They must have focus and practice discipline or they would never finish even one novel!
Despite my criticism, I can appreciate what Itani has done.
It is a very short but informative read.
Luc Caron is twelve years old, living in a small village in a part of occupied France. His mother is a widow, his father a soldier who died two years ago in the war. The village, damaged by the fighting and shelling is occupied by German soldiers who seem to be everywhere. They imposed a curfew requiring everyone to be off the streets by eight o’clock at night and groups are forbidden to meet except to attend church. There are not many left in the village. The young men are all gone, lost in the war or taken to Germany to work in the factories. Those left, the old men, the children and the women carry on as best they can, farming the fields and tending their shops.
Luc was a curious boy who liked to saunter around the village and find out what was going on, all the while keeping an eye out for small treasures. Like every young boy he liked to collect things and display them in his bedroom. The best find in his collection so far was a German coin dropped by one of the soldiers.
One day out walking about, Luc heard the distinctive sound of machine gunfire overhead. Looking up he saw two German planes and a British plane in a gunfight. He watched in awe, hoping the British pilot would get away, but knew the odds were against him. It was two against one. Suddenly the British plane turned upside down and Luc saw a dark black object fall rapidly from the sky into the nearby pond. He ran to the scene and found the pilot had landed on the ice on his back. He did not move and with just one look, Luc knew he was dead. Luc felt terrible and was crying beside the body when the German soldiers suddenly arrived and ordered him to leave. Luc watched from a distance as they dragged the body off the ice and threw it in a cart during which he distinctly heard one of the Germans say the pilot was a Canadian.
Luc raced to where he had seen the plane go down, hoping to get there before the soldiers and grab a souvenir. When he got there the plane was in pieces but he picked up two pieces of canvas, a piece from the wooden propeller and a torn card before the Germans arrived. They grabbed the torn card from his hands and once again sent him off. They did not see the two pieces of canvas or the small piece of wood from the propeller that he had hidden in his jacket.
The Germans took the body of the downed pilot to the village church and the next day there was a large funeral attended by many German soldiers and a General from a nearby village. There was even a marching band. It was a long held custom to honour pilots who died in the act of duty, even if they fought on opposite sides of the war. Following the service the pilot was buried in the church cemetery and the grave was marked with the name Jack Green RFC (Royal Flying Squad).
Luc was forever marked by this childhood experience. As time went on, the war ended and he married and had a child, Luc always remembered the pilot who he considered a hero. He knew he was the only one who had witnessed his death and felt badly that his family never knew what happened to him. He honored him by regularly visiting his grave and kept the treasures he had retrieved from the crash site.
From there the story continues revealing how Jack’s family finally came to know how their son died and how Luc connected with them many years later.
Itani calls this work a novella but to me it is more like a short story. Neither the novellas nor the short story are my favourite literary genres. They usually have interesting plots but are too short with little time or place to explore the characters in any depth and it is the characters which bring a plot to life. I think there was a framework for a great novel in this short, very moving story and having read Frances Itani’s other work, I think she would have done an excellent job if she had decided to take that route. When you consider the young boy Luc, Jack’s parent’s Peggy and Will Greenwood, John Bolten, Jack’s commanding officer, Mr. Harvey from the War Graves Office in Ottawa and even the German soldiers reverently attending Jack’s funeral in war town France, there is so much there to elaborate on and explore.
I enjoyed this effort, but was disappointed that the opportunity was not used to make this so much more than what it turned out to be, a novella instead of a full length novel. Perhaps Itani was not as excited as I was about the potential of this real life event to become what I thought it could be. I also understand writers cannot go off on tangents that might prove interesting while they are researching another book. They must have focus and practice discipline or they would never finish even one novel!
Despite my criticism, I can appreciate what Itani has done.
It is a very short but informative read.
June 11, 2020
In France, Luc was 12-years old in 1917 when he saw an air battle between one British and two German planes. The British plane came crashing down and Luc ran towards where the pilot landed. He was only able to notice/discover a few things before Germans shoo-ed him away, but enough to find out the pilot’s name, nationality (Canadian), and to collect a few souvenirs before heading home. Back in Nova Scotia, Jack Greenway’s parents are worried for their only son who went off to be a pilot in this war.
This is a very good short story. I would have loved for it to be longer, still, to be able to put more detail into the story. This was based on true events. Itani is a very good writer of war stories.
This is a very good short story. I would have loved for it to be longer, still, to be able to put more detail into the story. This was based on true events. Itani is a very good writer of war stories.
August 5, 2013
I think would be an interesting read for an adult literacy or ESL student if it matched their language level.
March 30, 2019
This is a short novella based on a true story. It tells the story of a pilot who died when his plane crashed in France during WWI. A boy from the town where the pilot crashed witnessed the event and was deeply touched by the experience. After the war, he was able to provide information that helped the grieving parents learn the details of their son's death and to find some peace. This short book helped me to understand more fully how difficult it is to lose a son in a war knowing so little about the circumstances of his death. This is a short but worthwhile book.
June 11, 2012
Based on a true story. Luc Caron lives in occupied northern France during World War I. On March 4, 1917 he is the only witness to three airplanes fighting in the sky. One plane flips over and the pilot falls to his death on the pond in his village. Not wanting to forget this moment, and suddenly feeling a connection to this pilot, Luc collects three souvenirs from the crash site that he keeps hidden from the Germans. Meanwhile, the Greenwoods live on an apple farm in Canada and their son has been missing for eleven years – he was a pilot in WWI. Fate eventually brings Luc and the Greenwoods together so that he can share his story of their heroic son, and they can finally find peace.
A very quick read and written in basic, repetitive language. I enjoyed the story, but because it was so repetitive it could have probably been done in 40 pages rather than 70. I liked that this was based on a true story, and it is interesting that Canadian families have these sorts of connections with people who were living in occupied France. It was also a bit touching that the German soldiers had such a respectful funeral for him.
A very quick read and written in basic, repetitive language. I enjoyed the story, but because it was so repetitive it could have probably been done in 40 pages rather than 70. I liked that this was based on a true story, and it is interesting that Canadian families have these sorts of connections with people who were living in occupied France. It was also a bit touching that the German soldiers had such a respectful funeral for him.
March 9, 2015
I was shocked when this novel ended. I really felt like I had only started the work. I feel like this was a great outline or opening to a novel, without all the meat to make it substantial. The downfall to reading on Kindle is that I lost track of the length and pacing of books. This is really a short story and even then needs more heart.
January 9, 2015
This is a very short book (60+pp) which seems to have been written for adults who are new readers. It wasn't what I expected but it was a nice way to pass an evening. The story was engaging and it respected the reader. It was especially poignant because it was based on a true story.
October 30, 2014
Good little book for Litercy/ESL class.
December 12, 2014
A short read on the effects of the death of one Pilot in WW1. Very insightful.
January 6, 2015
This is an excellent read for an mature ESL student or a young adult. Great writing as always from Frances Itani.
Want to read
October 21, 2016I think this book is like historical
And good for readers,but it is interesting
And good for readers,but it is interesting
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews