Down Around Midnight: A Memoir of Crash and Survival

by Robert Sabbag

Around midnight on June 17, 1979, Air New England Flight 248, en route from New York, crashed into the woods on Cape Cod. The pilot was killed, and the survivors struggled to escape the wreckage and wait for rescue. They survived with trauma both physical and emotional. Robert Sabbag was among them. This is his gripping account of the crash and his candid attempts, and those of the other survivors, to come to terms with its aftermath. Fast paced and mesmerizing, it is an unforgettable personal reflection on how we live with what we can never forget.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Aviation, Survival, Biography, History, Tragedy

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 11, 2009

About the author

Robert Sabbag is an American author and journalist. The memoir Down Around Midnight, is about a fatal plane crash he survived in 1979. Sabbag is a member of the Authors Guild and Writers Guild of America. His film Witness Protection was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture.

Reviews

[Trish · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story itself is interesting, but the telling of it is severely lacking. The writing was disjointed, with the author setting off on more psychological tangents than I could handle. I skimmed the second half, thinking at some point I'd get back into it, but never did. It was a completely unsatisfying read. The whole book, I kept thinking, "This guy wrote a bestseller? Really?"

[☼Bookish in Virginia☼ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow. You would think this book would be interesting. It's about a terrible crash that came close to killing everyone onboard. There's a plane screaming to a halt in a woods cloaked with dense fog and no moon. The author, Robert Sabbag, has his back broken as the seat belt he wore stayed buckled, but the seat itself was thrown free of it's connections to the fuselage. He and the other injured survivors stagger out into the black night, doused with aviation fuel....

These events were ultimately so traumatic that the author couldn't write about it for decades. And when he did, he went back to talk to the people who had been there. You would think it would be interesting... but it's not. (At least not for me)

I chose this book because I have recently read some stunningly good autobiographical books. One was Donovan Campbell's "Joker One". Another was Tori McClure's "Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean". In the first case the story was about a Marine Platoon in Iraq. In the second, McClure's story about rowing across the Atlantic. Yes rowing. And it was so good. So I figured a plane crash, a seasoned author, that had drama, pathos, and be worth reading. I thought that after decades of consideration that the author's analysis would be deep and thoughtful-- that I could learn something about humans in terrible situations.

What I found was reporting. A too brief explanation of what occurred that night followed by too much detail about the wrong things. I didn't, and don't care, for example, about the subsequent careers of the young people on board that flight. I was happy for them that they graduated from University X and that they now had more than one house, but honestly I was looking for more about the consequences of what they, uniquely, experienced. There is an effort to dig out this information. Sabbag knew what he was looking for, but how he presented the information left me cold and unaffected. I was not drawn in to care.

So for me, Down Around Midnight was not a great read. If after this review though you are still interested I'd suggest looking at one of Mr. Sabbag's others books which have a 'Look Inside' excerp and see if his writing style appeals to you. Or, of course, there's the library. I can't suggest this as a buy though.

Pam T~

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not because my cousin wrote this but the fact that I was in europe the whole summer when it the plane crash happened and never heard about it til we were back in touch after 20 yrs..he just visited me and gave me his book and I couldn't put it down..it is a compelling account of a plane crash that he survived, along with 8 others..gripping!!!

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbc...

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I try not to imagine what it would be like to be in a plane crash, but Sabbag really does bring that experience to life in his book. It's a really interesting mix of first hand narration, curated reflection, and psychological musings, which makes sense as you learn more about how he wrote the book based on his own recollections and then reaching out to others to add their perspective. At first it seemed really strange that just a few of the people weren't named or described, but that mystery is later solved when you learn that some weren't interested in talking to Sabbag or about that night, so he does preserve their anonymity as much as possible. In general, it's just amazing that a plane can crash and people can survive at all, so the story (really, stories) of recovering from both the physical and psychological trauma that it brings is both sobering and inspiring and a testament to how differently people cope depending on their circumstances and previous experiences.

"around"

[Marianne Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was thoroughly enjoying the insights of this survivor's experience and how he dealt with his memories when a plane crash happened. Trying to get back into this story, another plane crashed. Days later, another plane crashed. The news at this time is just too heavy for me and I had to put this story away for a while.

[Velma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read because I am a fan of aviation books. It wasn’t my favorite. But I would read Sabbag’s book on cocaine smuggling if I ran across it.

[Susan Souza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy read. Journalistic style, with a creative flare. Point, recovering from traumatic accidents takes years.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just before his 33rd birthday, when he was, as he says, “half-famous” because his first book, Snowblind, had become a bestseller, Sabbag was on his way to Cape Cod in a small turboprop plane. Due to pilot error, the plane came down in a thickly wooded area. The pilot paid for his mistake with his life, but the co-pilot and eight passengers survived.

So this short (214-page) memoir is about the crash, looking back over a 28-year interval during which Sabbag just tried to get on with his life, coping with the physical aftermath of extensive injuries and the psychological trauma of being a survivor. As Sabbag relates, the incident cut his life into two: the before and after phases. Not surprising, really.

Memoirs, of course, are all about the great I, and therefore usually come across as a bit narcissistic. I don’t think Down Around Midnight is an exception to the rule. Still, there’s a certain fascination in knowing what it’s like to survive a plane crash, especially if, like me, you board every plane with the absolute certainty that it’s going to drop out of the sky. The story begins with the crash, and ends with the scar left in the woods where the crash happened, a fitting metaphor for the scar that cuts across the lives of the people on board. Sabbag explores both the causes of the accident and the bond that exists between those passengers and rescue workers who are able to deal with talking about it; not all are.

I suppose that if you’re involved in a traumatic incident, and you’re a writer, sooner or later you’re going to deal with that incident in writing. I have the impression of a man who knows his time on this earth is finite and needs to face the defining moment of his life once and for all; but for all that, there’s a certain defensiveness and pushing back in the text. At those moments, the writing becomes brash and journalistic, not at all to my taste.

Sabbag is at his best when he’s being honest about his ongoing emotional reaction to the crash, in particular his guilt that he may have exacerbated the injuries of the passengers he insisted be removed from the plane, afraid that it would catch fire. Once he reaches that admission, something seems to be released and the writing just takes on a deeper and more personal tone.

There were points in this book when I felt that I was only continuing with it because it was short and because I wanted to review it. It sometimes seemed meandering, and the variations in writing style were a little off-putting. But the last twenty pages or so redeemed it for me.

[Marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Until the last few chapters, I was prepared to give this rambling self-spiraling memoir a two-star rating. We're led to expect a reunion of Sabbag with his fellow crash survivors -- one by one, almost thirty years after the 1979 plane crash -- with personal ruminations on the meaning of sudden crisis and survival. You have to plow through a lot of sidebars to get that thread. As others note in their reviews, Sabbag is all over the place -- the crash, Cape Cod, the media then and now, his writing career, his relationships. These themes could be seamlessly woven together by a writer as skilled as Sabbag may be, but they seem to crash into each other like bump cars. For example, we're about to meet a fellow survivor . . . but first we get an extended history of a general store in Cape Cod where Sabbag and the survivor plan to meet. (Cape Cod is practically a primary character in the book -- as Sabbag perhaps intended it to be.) The effect is, at best, irritating, and at worst, a severe impediment to his narrative. But then one gets it. Sabbag is carrying a deeply unsettling and unanswered question from the crash -- and he completes the book without learning the answer. Did his decision to move an injured teenage girl from the plane worsen her injuries, perhaps with permanent damage? The plane could have exploded -- so he and another passenger got her out of the plane -- sounds heroic to me. But the plane did not explode. He never heard the extent or longterm consequences of her injuries, and when he locates the girl's parents years later (the girl's two sisters were also on the plane -- can you imagine?), the mother would not respond and the father told him his daughters would not talk to him -- and ultimately hung up on him. Was the goal of his book forgiveness or at least reassurance that he caused no harm? Was he searching for respite from a sense of guilt? As this became more apparent in the last chapters, I switched from annoyance at Sabbag to a heartfelt wish he gained the respite he sought through his memoir. For the book is more an examination of conscience than a study of a plane crash by one of its survivors.

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sabbag was aboard a small plane going from New York to Cape Cod in 1979 when the plane crashed into the woods. The author explores the event and reflects on his personal experiences (both physical and psychological) in the aftermath along with four other passengers onboard that night. (There were eight passengers and two crewmembers onboard in total.)

Sabbag's interviews with his fellow passengers were inconsequential and superficial for the most part. The disjointed assemblage of the interviews (and the whole book, for that matter) was jarring. I felt that he could have used his reporting skills a bit more persuasively in requesting interviews with the co-pilot and three other passengers. The book never coalesced into a fully realized complete story. The back cover notes that Sabbag has written a film, which made me wonder why he stumbled so badly in developing the experiences of the passengers he did interview.

Perhaps Sabbag was just too close to the subject and wasn't able to distance himself enough from the event to adequately delve into the complicated emotions involved.

In looking at Amazon reviews, I note some higher ratings than I gave the book but I'm sticking with 2 stars. I found the book incomplete and unsatisfying.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author's intention was to follow take advantage of the motivation that drew him and express all of his emotions and findings about the crash. And that he did.
I was bored of reading every thought that came across his mind. After all of his interviewing and research over twenty years, I would have liked to know why the plane actually crashed. We only know as much that the crash may have been intentional by the pilot.

However, I did find some pages interesting, whether true or not. Physics of the plane descending and the impact broken by the trees, which aided in their survival. Neurological symptoms, such as the effects or encouragements of PTSD (post traumatic stress syndrome) regarding survivor's guilt, not only reliving the event with your own death, but constantly living in fear that you 'can only outlive your fate as long as you can outrun it'. Biochemically, 'the link between emotion and memory is the release of stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which trigger the release of norepinephrine, which reinforces the permanence of traumatic memories'. And, every memory from your photographic flashbulb memory are altered every time you retrieve and refile it, in the perception of vividness.

[Adrian]

Sabbag was a survivor of the crash of Flight 248 Air New England in June 1979 along with several other people. Thirty years after the crash which took place in dense forest on Cape Cod he decides to piece together what happened by tracking down survivors. He makes contact with most of them. Information on how they coped with the aftermath is fascinating enough- they all suffered from one or more of depression, anger, lack of confidence and survivor guilt though revelations on how it changed their lives are thin on the ground. This book at just over 200 pages feels padded and I don't know if there was ever more here than a long magazine article.

[Monica]

Geoffrey Jennings, an independent bookseller at Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kan., gushed about “Down Around Midnight” by Robert Sabbag, a memoir about a plane crash that he survived 30 years ago, and its aftermath. “I am abrasive and jaded and I have read lots of things,” Jennings said on the floor of the exhibition hall. “I was reading the book at night and my wife came down and I said ‘there is nothing you could say or do — in fact you could not even pay me — to stop reading this book.’”

NY Times Book Blog - 5/31/09

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Down Around Midnight: A Memoir of Crash and Survival by Robert Sabbag (Viking 2009) (Biography). This author is best known for having written Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade, which was an intriguing memoir of mid-level cocaine trafficking in the 1970's. Down Around Midnight: A Memoir of Crash and Survival is a completely boring and unrelated tale concerning how Sabbag survived a plane crash on Cape Cod at the height of his fame. This is the most important story in the world – in the author's eyes only. My rating: 5/10, finished 2010.

[Lydia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two Star (my stars aren't showing up right so I'm including that info here...)

Anyways, I usually find books that talk about the unimaginable (plane wrecks, animal attacks, etc..) things people have had to survive very interesting as it shows the strength of human character. But I was a bit disappointed in this one. There were a few quotes that I liked from the book...but otherwise the author just seemed to jump around too much for me.

[MaureenMcBooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have flown over Cape Cod Bay in a little plane so I was primed for this book. But Sabbag's revisiting of his 1979 crash turned out to be a lot less interesting than I expected. The writer's recreation of the accident and his encounters with a couple of the key passengers were interesting, as was his finding of how exhausted the pilot was. But the story loses interest with each added player, maybe betraying that the writer was losing the energy for this research.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author looks back to a plane accident he was in at Cape Cold, where the pilot died, but everyone else survives. He decides to contact a lot of the other people on the plane and examines how the accident affected their lives. They were in the forest for a few hours and while it was an awful experience for them it wasn't as if they had to live through a long ordeal.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

In 1979 there was a plane crash in the woods of Cape Cod. Sabbag was on that plane and 30 years later researches and writes about how that crash affected his own life and of some of the other survivors. In being very careful not to intrude or inflict pain on the others, the book ends up being mostly about him, defying the early promise of the book. A great premise, but a milquetoast result.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Airplane crash in 1979 into the woods of Cape Cod. I'm always drawn to books about local happenings. It was mildly interesting. You always try to imagine how a crash would feel. Of course the author survived to describe that and the feelings involved afterward. He also interviewed fellow passengers in order to record their perception of what happened that night in the dark.

[♥ Marlene♥ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointment. I thought this would be an interesting book about a plain crash but it was more about what happened after. (He tried to find some survivors 20 years later) which could be very interesting but it wasn't. probably because he jumped from one thing to another. Some stuff was very detailed which i did not care for. Skimmed the second part.

[Clint · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was hoping for more of a narrative read of the details of the crash, but this is a more introspective look at how the plane crash affected and changed the author as he moved forward. He attempted to find the other survivors from the relatively few aboard the small plane and the rescuers and met with interestingly mixed results. It's almost like a book he wrote for himself.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading this...It reminded me a bit of "the Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Junger. It is also written by a reporter, Robert Sabbag who writes for "Rolling Stone" magazine. He tells a good story and also explains issues related to the crash that happened in 1979

[Jenifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am usually not a memoir reader because I find that most memoirs are self serving, "well, I was a very remarkable child! Handsome, smart and funny."
This memoir actually told the story of the crash!

[Topher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A non-fiction writer who survived a plane crash in 1979 goes back to re-examine it, and figure out what happened to him and the other survivors as a result. Did they change? What were the long term effects? Etc....

[Aj · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, the book was factual, not exciting but my cousin was the brave teenage girl who made it out of the woods for help, and to this day remains that strong, organized wonderful girl that helped save those on the plane and I am grateful there is documentation of her story.

[SouthWestZippy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is a survivor of a plane crash that occurred over 20 years ago. He goes out and interviews other survivors and tries to piece together what happen that day and see what became of them. I found to be a dry read at time but interesting.

[Marge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Living through a plane crash certainly would change ones life, but I didn't feel what the author felt - I never attached to anyones emotions that were shared. Maybe the story just wasn't there.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting! It reads like good fiction, but it's not -- it's a memoir by an author who also is a survivor of a plane crash that took place back in 1979. A gripping tale!

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

eh - my attention span is NIL right now. it was interesting but I just didn't care..... ;) and it was checked out so I had to turn it back in.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a true story; the author contacted or tried to contact the 7 other passengers on his plane who survived a crash in 1979.