Loop the Loop
Dan Spencer
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Lulu Press
ISBN: 1411639936

In 1912 America is taking flight & Herkimer Dawes vies for the skies.

It's the Progressive Era & aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss & stunt flyer Lincoln Beachey, & the infant movie business in Hollywood have caught America's imagination. That summer, on a family vacation to Niagara Falls, wealthy & first born Herkimer Dawes is entranced by a stunt flight into the watery froth. On the way home he decides to reject his father's expectations that he follow into the family soap-making business, & go fly aeroplanes.

He makes his way to San Diego to study aeronautics & meets the seductive & troubled actress, Eloise. In no time, Herkimer enters the high-risk, high-paying realm of exhibition flyers. While he devises sophisticated & daring aerial tricks, the public is not impressed, preferring birdman Beachey's flashy, death-defying stunts.

Loop the Loop is a grand, atmospheric, romantic novel rich with characters from which today's stereotypes are derived. It could have done with some editing, however, between the covers is a soaring story, filled with the language upon which the cliches of today were based, of the life & times of a bygone era.

Quite well done -- Dan Spencer has a way with stories & eclectic details. Loop the Loop will fascinate anyone interested in the early days & stars of flight & movies.

More from Dan Spencer:
All Eyes Skyward: A tale of love, danger, & deception set during the heroic Berlin Airlift of 1948-49
Four Wheels Good: Across America at the dawn of the automobile era.
(01/15/06)

Rebecca