No Ordinary Bird: Drug Smuggling, a Plane Crash, and a Daughter's Quest for the Truth

by Artis Henderson

In the vein of Small Fry or Priestdaddy, No Ordinary Bird is a compelling father-daughter story that reads like true crime, haunted by a question the dashing and mysterious Lamar Chester had always taught his daughter to “How do you tell the good guys from the bad?”

Artis was five when a plane crash killed her beloved father. For years, it was simply called “the accident.”

But many things weren’t getting discussed. Like Lamar himself—a swashbuckling, larger-than-life pilot, a doting father and husband, and the most popular farmer in Georgia. Or that the IRS had immediately taken the chickens, the airplanes, the islands in the Bahamas. . . . Afterwards, Artis and her mother broke contact with everyone and fled, rebuilding from the bottom up as if Lamar’s big, wild life had never happened.

Years later, a friend tells Artis Lamar’s plane was her father had been one of the biggest drug smugglers in Miami in the 1970s. At the time of his death, he was about to testify in a trial that had swept up everyone from the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, to a US district attorney, to the Colombian drug cartels. But the deeper Artis digs, the more unexpected the story becomes.

Beyond the dramatic betrayals, dangerous drug lords, and geopolitical intrigue is the beating heart of this riveting a daughter’s grappling with a dark legacy and her memories of the father who had been the light of her life. Who are the good guys, who are the bad guys, and is there a difference at all?

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, True Crime, Biography, Audiobook, Drugs, Crime

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 2, 2025

Reviews

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Artis Henderson is an American journalist and memoirist; she previously published a memoir being widowed when her soldier husband was killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq, 2014's Unremarried Widow.

Henderson's 2025 memoir No Ordinary Bird profiles another person close to Henderson who was unfortunately killed in an aviation accident -- Henderson's father, Lamar Chester, a pilot-turned-drug smuggler. Then-5-year-old Henderson was in the small plane with her father in the fatal 1985 crash, though thankfully she survived. After the crash, Henderson lost touch with her dad's family and friends, and didn't reconnect or re-explore things until her mid-30s, when she uncovered evidence that the crash may not have been accidental, and the circumstances around her father's illegal activities may not have been as illegal as previously thought.

I'm sure this memoir was cathartic for Henderson to write, though from a casual reader's perspective, I feel like the evidence on whether the crash was accidental or not, or what the nature of her dad's involvement with the government was, is still out, and will probably never be definitively determined.

My statistics:
Book 313 for 2025
Book 2239 cumulatively

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am very much an outlier in that this book just did not work for me. I completely feel for the author and ALL that she has suffered, but I struggled with so much of this book, its subject matter, and how everything is dealt with; this is very much a “not-for-me” issue, and clearly few others.
Regardless, I am glad that the author was able to tell her story and that is has resonated with so many people [there WERE parts that really touched it and it was what kept me reading], even while being disappointed that it wasn’t really for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, Artis Henderson, and Harper for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Xine Segalas · Rating 5 out of 5]

No Ordinary Bird is an extraordinary work — both intimate and investigative — as Artis Henderson traces the shadow and shine of her father, Lamar Chester’s life. What begins as a daughter’s remembrance becomes a quest through rumor, evidence, and memory to uncover what really happened in the crash that shaped her childhood and ultimately her life.
Henderson’s storytelling is graceful and fearless. She writes with deep affection for her father’s larger-than-life spirit while also sifting through the contradictions and secrets that surrounded him. The book’s rhythm moves beautifully between the personal and the investigative — part family memoir, part true-life mystery.
What I’ll remember most are the people and places that still carry her father’s story — a community filled with rumor, loyalty, and loss. Henderson’s search through those layers of memory and myth feels deeply human. No Ordinary Bird is a rare kind of memoir: beautifully written, emotionally precise, and quietly astonishing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper for allowing me to read a prerelease of this truly, no ordinary book.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book! How well do we really know our parents? Especially a parent that might have been taken from us at a young age? Artis Henderson uses this book to explore the rumors about her father, his death, and the complexities of being a good person while being on the other side of the law.

When Artis was very young, her father took her up in his plane (a normal occurrence for them), but this time, the plane crashed, killing her father, but leaving her to survive with multiple injuries. At the time of the crash there were incitements against her father for running drugs on his plane into the US. After his death, her mother isolated them from all his known associates.

We not only learn about what kind of man Artis' father was, but we are also privy to the conspiracies and the fact that the government might have had more to cover up than to prosecute.

Not only was this book interesting, but it brought forth the humanity of her father. Not all people who break the law are bad people, some just want a better life for their family (and then get in too deep?). The first half was good, the second half was exciting!

Thank you to Net Galley for giving me a copy of this book. The opinions are all my own.

[Devon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully remembered and written. The government is evil.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! What a beautifully captivating story. Artis brings her father and his business to life in a way where you feel the humanity of it all and cannot help but fall in love through her eyes. Her story of her search for the truth was both heartbreaking and inspiring. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say this is a new must read that I highly recommend!

[william chester · Rating 5 out of 5]

AJ peels back the complex world of her father, a man who clearly was not intended to live an ordinary life, no matter what his station at birth. And she does it as she has before, with simple eloquence that leaves the reader, at least this one, feeling as if the experience is your own.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️My review: Amazing book. While it is essentially a memoir, it is also a lesson in how drug smuggling worked in the 70's and 80's and the fine line between government and smugglers. The author's father Lamar was larger than life to her as a child, and to everyone around him. He had rules and parameters for his illegal activities and only worked with those he trusted. In looking at history it is easy to judge a man who brings drugs into the country and who employs his brother, son and best friends. Looking at the same man as a daughter who worshipped him paints a different picture.
The fine line between legal and illegal, felons and officials is a mystery that the author needs to study. I was fascinated throughout the entire story. While some questions remain not fully answered, the legacy of Lamar is bittersweet.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Publishing for an advance digital copy in exchange for my review.

[Margo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do incredible childhoods make great writers, or at least good writers? Artis Henderson was given a tragic beginning to her life and her exploration of her father's plane crash and ultimate death led her to this incredible story. Not all of us have grown up with the excessive riches of illegal drug smuggling to the death of a parent to a more mundane middle class childhood.

Henderson tells the tale of her adventuresome, handsome, creative father who isn't satisfied with life as an Eastern Airlines pilot (already a bit of a thrill seeking job). Instead he finds adventure and cash smuggling drugs from Central and South America into the US in the 80s and 90s. He puts together a large operation in the air and on the ground that bring him fast, incredible wealth. He parks the money in a resort that he builds in northern GA where Artis spends the first 5 years of her life. The law does catch up with her father and he is under criminal investigation her father dies in a plane crash with her in the plane - he is killed and she is seriously injured.

The book is her exploration in trying to understand the truths of her father's life, the people who worked with him, the small community they lived in and her older stepbrothers. The story lagged a bit about 2/3rds through, but picked up as she learned that her father's death was in all liklihood caused by tampering from the US government because her father was involved in the shipment of arms to the Nicaraguan Contras during the whole Iran Contra scandal. They silenced him because he was probably going to testify to this in hopes of reducing the charges against him for the drug smuggling.

The writing is good, but overall I felt like this could have been a long magazine article. An amazing story, but didn't quite work for me as a full length book.

[Christina Pace · Rating 4 out of 5]

A big thank-you to HarperCollins & NetGalley for this ARC! No Ordinary Bird is set to publish on September 2, 2025.

No Ordinary Bird is a memoir by Artis Henderson about her father, Lamar Chester, and the plane crash that took his life in 1985. The book is split into two 'arcs' after opening on the traumatic event - the 'before' arc, where Lamar Chester is a poor farm boy turned pilot and part-time marijuana smuggler, to the 'after' arc, where the author begins to piece together her past with her father.

I really liked this book. It's short but is still a solid page-turner. It starts small, exclusively honing in on Lamar Chester before expanding outwards into the politics of the late 70s to early 80s. I think to an older reader who lived through those eras, this information might be redundant, but as a younger person born in the mid 90s, my interest was piqued. I had heard about the Iran-Contra Affair and the role the U.S. played in Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, and Bahamian politics in history classes, but this provided a more comprehensive summary, and adds a human to it by connecting it to Lamar Chester.

I think the only thing that I have to say negative about this book is that I wanted to know more about Terry's perspective, the son from the first marriage that Lamar took on his transports. Seeing as how he was more involved in his father's business than the author was, it would've been cool to hear from his side about how he felt regarding his father and smuggling. But I understand that this is Artis' story to tell, and that Terry might have not wanted to detail too much about that part of his life.

[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard reaction to write. To me it was more about the author than the father for sure.

I was left with a distaste for whatever his overseeing activities were- not just in his last Piper Cub years. Overall the daughter's life is sad and also intensely self-centered. Her parents were lacking conscience and mostly hedonistic to a degree that the entire read was NOT as I thought it would be at all. Really for me off-putting. BOTH of her parents, not only her father as she easily forgives the infidelities all around, it seems. Bad outcomes usually occur in those marriage coupleships.

This was a serendipity read of the month and I knew nothing of it before I took it out. Artis Henderson writes well but the conclusions were rather murky, IMHO. But as she was on the plane when it crashed, I could see the reasons she investigated as long as she did.

Actually I had more interest in the siblings that only got added somewhat near the end. Her father was not a good person despite his schmooze ability and other skills.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book, and I devoured it in a just a few days. My father also died when I was young, in a mysterious accident. But that's not the main reason I was so eager to read No Ordinary Bird. It's because I'm a fan of Artis Henderson's work, and I knew this new book would not disappoint.

I've used her first memoir, Unremarried Widow, in my creative writing classes to show aspiring memoirists how to write gut-wrenching emotion that is also, paradoxically filled with restraint, nuance, and spare prose. She writes so movingly and viscerally about grief, love, anger, and longing--but she does it with the kind of no-wasted-words style of a Joan Didion essay. No Ordinary Bird goes into even deeper and murkier territory than her first book, but she is always in control and always surprises us with her insights and artistry. It's a work of remarkable bravery and honesty--and beauty.

[Sennehs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Harper Collins Publishers and NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

This book was less of a biography and more of a mystery to be solved, but that made it more intense. The writing is technically sound, but I wish it had less of a robotic voice. Perhaps that’s how the author is trying to maintain a distance and present the book methodically and unemotionally? In the last few chapters that seemed to change a bit when she was coming to terms with some of her feelings.

The research is impeccable, and the breadth of people who were consulted for information is impressive. Of course, there is so much that’s unknowable about the final outcome of her father’s life, but the author was thorough in searching for the facts. The book was fascinating, and I wish it could have been longer, but the end was perfection.

[Valerity (Val) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw this book mentioned in my local paper, and set about getting ahold of it. All simply because it was about a story that has a focus on my town of Cleveland, Georgia. After reading it, I was blown away by the story. A woman digs into her father’s life when she turns 35, when she hasn’t talked about him in all the years since his death when she was 5. He was a commercial pilot turned pot smuggler. He started out on a small scale, but eventually began bringing in other pilots to ramp up his operation, becoming very wealthy along the way. He bought 500 acres in Cleveland, Georgia for a farm. The author learns much more about his crazy life when she begins talking to and interviewing many people who knew him. Many who had worked with or for him. She uncovers a big shock about how he died. Beautifully written, now I want to read her other book.

[Angelina_Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hello,
I recently finished reading your story and was truly impressed. The scenes were so cinematic and immersive that I could easily imagine them playing out on screen. The setting and characters have such great energy I think they would translate beautifully into a comic format.

I am a commissioned artist specializing in comic and manga adaptations, and I would love to explore the possibility of collaborating with you in the future. Of course, there is absolutely no obligation I simply wanted to share the idea.

If you’d like to connect or view samples of my work, you can find me on Discord (aangelinaa._).

Thank you again for sharing your story it was an absolute pleasure to read.

Best regards,
Angelina

[Phil]

Can't wait to read it. I'll be particularly interested to learn how in her previous book, Artis, who happens to be a graduate of the Columbia journalism school, didn't seem to know that her father was anything but a hard-working yeoman farmer – despite the fact that when he died in a very suspicious plane crash in June of 1985 the NY Times noted he was under federal indictment. I'll also be curious to see how she handles her mother's completely fascinating story, up to and including Fox Hill, and that of her mother's military pilot brother Bill. If Artis can bring herself to lay it all out there this time, this could be a real barn-burner.

[Christine (Queen of Books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a wild reading experience: It took me weeks to make it about a third of the way in, and I was debating DNFing as I wasn't all that engaged.

And then I read the rest in one sitting.

Artis was five when a small plane her father was flying injured her and killed him. Her father, who was an experienced pilot, on a short easy flight.

Her father, who also had been indicted and charged with conspiracy, racketeering, money laundering, tax evasion, and drug trafficking.

Artis pieces together what may have happened - and I was gripped.

I described the story to my spouse whose first question was, "Is this nonfiction?" Yeah. Very glad I stuck with it.

[P · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was provided an advanced copy of this book from Net Galley and appreciated the opportunity to read this fascinating true story.
No Ordinary Bird reminded me a lot of the story shared about another smuggler during this time in the movie American Made. No Ordinary Bird is told by Lamar’s youngest daughter. Since her father died when she was only 5, she did the work in researching all the details of his life and his experience going from a commercial pilot with Eastern Airlines to smuggling drugs.
It was told through her lens, and the research, memories and details were compelling.

[Relena_reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Artis Henderson is a powerful storyteller with an immense story to tell. Even the mundane details of her family's past are told in vivid, but her family's story doesn't have many mundane moments, so most of this is a hit well outside of the ballpark. If you're a fan of true crime or family sagas, this should be on your list, and there's something about getting to listen to Henderson tell it herself that really makes the audiobook extra compelling.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an audio ARC.

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to the publishers for the free copy of this book I won through a Goodreads giveaway. Artis Henderson is an excellent writer who knows how to build and tell a story. I was engrossed from the first page and tore through this quickly. Emotional, well researched, and captivating. I loved how this book combined her own personal experiences and memories, the life of her father and family, as well as relevant historical and political context. I am sorry for the loss she experienced and I hope this book helped answer the questions she grew up with.

[Shirley Freeman]

This could be filed under the 'truth is stranger than fiction' category. When Artis was 5, she was riding in the back of a small plane piloted by her dad. As they flew over their beautiful farm land, the plane lost elevation and crashed. Her dad was killed and Artis was gravely injured. She eventually made a full recovery. After decades of silence about the whole event, she was determined to find out all she could about her larger-than-life father. She knew her dad was a pilot for Eastern airlines and also an admitted drug (marijuana) smuggler. And she knew her dad was being investigated for all of his smuggling and business dealings when he died. Henderson spent several years finding people, getting them to talk, and rebuilding lost relationships. The story she pieces together is mind-blowing and probably far more common than most of us are aware.

[Emma Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Wow!

I had advanced notice from early readers of No Ordinary Bird that the prose was going to be fantastic and the story difficult and gripping. All of this true, and the contents still surprising and the language astounding even with the lead-up.

I am grateful I got to attend Artis Henderson’s singular reading for this book with friends. She is a very generous memoirist and masterful in providing just the right amount of detail in a way that feels cognizant of the stakes for the people interviewed, the grief and growth of its creation as author/partial subject, and incredible, deliberate pacing for readers who know nothing about the story at its onset.

This book is doubly valuable to me as a SWFL local, with a very limited prior understanding of the drug trade’s influence on the area’s economy and culture. It facilitated conversations with my family about what they experienced as new Florida residents as arrests were being made in my childhood neighborhood, and it tapered the spectacle of rumors of classmates’ and friends’ families who are connected to the trade in some way.

Heartily recommend.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could have read this in one day. It has everything I love - impeccable writing, illegal activity, government coverup, likable bad guys. Not only is this a daughter’s quest to discover who her father really was but it is a well sourced look into drug smuggling through Miami and the Bahamas in the 70s and 80s. It’s also incredibly emotional as Artis releases her past trauma and rediscovers herself through family and people who never stopped caring about her.

[Bryanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the way the author navigated the evidence of her father's history and case. She provided facts, with background information, without making it boring to read. I appreciate that the author included the readers in her journey of learning about her father, her family, and her own past. I was captivated by the story and learned a lot about that time in U.S. history.

[Sheri S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henderson had heard many stories about her father and his work as a commercial pilot and later as a drug smuggler. She knew about the extravagant living and the trouble he encountered due to his activities. However, as she digs into his death, she realizes that there is much more to the plane crash that killed her father.

[Deticia Oosthuizen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful Read

I have lived in White County almost my entire life. I was 12 when the crash happened. I had always heard rumors about the crash, but had no idea who was involved or what happened. I hope this book will have healing for Artis. She did a beautiful job telling her story. It was a good read and well written.

[Meghan Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was hard to put down. With her vulnerability and skillful writing, the author brought me with her through every human emotion. The suspense kept my heart beating quickly all the way to the tender conclusion. I am looking forward to sharing the book with friends. Thank you to Artis Henderson for sharing your story, and thanks for the giveaway!

[Kenneth Hawk · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting book about finding yourself.

The author does an excellent job of describing her life and her father’s relationship with his family. She takes you places that are surprising.
Well written and worth reading.

[Felicia Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audio book and was in awe that the narrator was the author. It’s incredible what she survived and learned of her father. To be able to not only write about this but to also narrate it is courageous. This book was very moving and I highly recommend the audio book version.

[Jodi Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This falls under "only in Florida", so amazing it has to be true! I liked it so much, Arits will be visiting the Fort Myers Literary Society in April 2026. We love our Fort Myers sisters.