BOOK BITE
FLYING TO TOMBSTONE by Gordon McBride. Baltimore: PublishAmerica Book Publishers, 2003. Pp, 313. (PS3563 .M33F3).
The author of FLYING TO TOMBSTONE is the Rev. Gordon McBride, rector of Grace/St. Paul’s, Tucson, AZ. McBride says the characters and situations in this novel do not equate with real life. But, the experience of the author as a pilot, and as one who is in touch with human pain professionally makes this book come alive.
The Rev. Jerry Hanning, the principal fictional character, is the weekend vicar of St. Peter’s Church in Bisbee, recently merged with St. Paul’s in Tombstone. He pilots a Cessna Skyhawk..
The book is about violence between ranchers and illegal immigrants. It is also about romance and love.
Each chapter of FLYING TO TOMBSTONE begins with a short theological statement from the pen of Marcus Borg, Walter Wink, the BCP or other source. The novel defends helping illegal immigrants. It is not far from Tucson to Tombstone by air, but it is long journeys of human emotions, love, loss, hurt and hope for the people South of the border and those to the North, to find what they all were intended to be by God.
Marcus Borg makes this point. “McBride leads [the reader] into the complexities of ordinary people dealing with the big issues of life: love, sex, religion, politics, grief, death and the call of justice in the life of faith. An exciting addition to religious fiction.”
---The Library Committee