A Day in Eternity (ePub)

Inspired by the Life, Letters, and Poetry of John Gillespie Magee, Jr., Author of aviation poem "High Flight."

This penetrating adventure of the mind and spirit soars through the lives of two rogue aviators and their mutual passion for flight. Anson Roe is a British crop duster who struggles with his career and his love life. John Gillespie Magee, Jr. is a poet and WWII fighterpilot with an uncommon view on death. When they meet in rural America, Magee challenges Roe down to the quick of his soul.

A Day in Eternity explores the mysterious aftermath of an accident, raising questions about the very nature of temporal and physical reality. Loving creates an effectively surreal story that maintains clarity and forward momentum. She weaves a lyrical psychological puzzle through flashbacks to the protagonist's former life and tenuous present. Anson Roe's predicament is a decidedly unique one, and Loving explores his fractured psychological state with power and grace. She crafts both primary and secondary characters from the inside-out, creating subtly impactful interactions while maintaining intrigue. - BookLife

The poetry of [John Magee] is magically woven into the story. ...The transcendence of time and place, and the building of the characters as they grow, ascend, and fly through the rising action, is stimulating. - Readers' Favorite

The philosophical element adds significantly to the plot, while also making the book inspiring. - Online Book Club

Anson Roe will ignore borders and strain relationships to land a career in Ag-aviation. But when he dreams of crashing his airplane in a remote corner of the world, all he can think of is the whereabouts of his journalist girlfriend, Vivianne Keene. He awakens at a small airstrip in rural America, a year backward in time, suffering from apparent heatstroke and random amnesia. Brought to his knees, he is rescued by a World War II Spitfire pilot and poet, John Gillespie Magee, Jr., and makes a shocking discovery.

Mere flesh and bone could barely contain John Magee's lifeforce as he grew into a young man. A self-made intellectual as a teenager, he didn't expect to live past his twenties. When stranded in America at the onset of Britain's war with Germany, he was hellbent on returning to England and his love, novelist Elinor Lyon. At age 19 he finally went back as a pilot officer with the Canadian Royal Air Force. Exuberant with newfound freedom and powered by a Supermarine Spitfire, he "trod the untrespassed sanctity of space ... and touched the face of God," thus birthing his sonnet, "High Flight," the aviator's anthem for more than 75 years. Blending history with fiction, John Magee's own words on love and death in A Day in Eternity resonate for all time.

Kathryn Gabriel Loving's The Logos of Soul, A Novel on the Light and Sound, was a finalist in the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. She has written several historical non-fiction books, including Marietta Wetherill, Life with the Navajos of Chaco Canyon. She lives in New Mexico with her husband, a USAF veteran.