A book review of The Long Flight Home: A True Story of Years Lost and Love Found by Beth and Jim Aubrey
Stars: *****
Aubrey-Redman Publishing (2024)
Memoir
336 pages
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review. This post contains affiliate links.
Summary: THE LONG FLIGHT HOME is based on a true story of a 15-year-old girl from a small coal mining town in Southeastern Kentucky who wrote a letter to a pirate radio station near the Isle of Man requesting a pen pal. A reply came from a 16-year-old boy living a large fishing port in the Northwest of England.
They became great friends, corresponding through written letters for almost two years.Then, after an unexpected turn of events, the girl was forced to abruptly abandon their friendship.They lost touch, never knowing what happened to the other, each carrying on their separate lives. Forty-two years had passed when he opened an old desk drawer and came across a well-worn bookmark she had once enclosed in a Christmas card to him. His curiosity about her and what her life must be like, prompted him to do an internet search for her. This is the amazing story of their journeys.
The Long Flight Home
This was an amazing 5 star read for sure and it’s even better because it’s a TRUE story. That’s why I love memoirs. You feel the emotions with a real person who actually felt those emotions during those stories.
The story is magical and I wanted to keep reading and not put it down because I was eager to see how they reunited. I read this book in 3 days because I do have other things I have to do and it’s over 300 pages. It definitely reads better in a shorter period of time than it would a few pages here and there over a month or more. It’s captivating too.
I have never thought as much about my parents life (they would be around the same age as the authors) in regards to how much times have changed. From the 60s to 2020s is insane. So much changed in how people live. You get to see this change in the book as their lives get more modern and technological.
Sometimes when memoirs get very indepth with details I feel like it’s too indepth and I think something along the lines of “okay I don’t need to know THIS much about this part of their life, let’s get to the end (where things get better, lessons are learned or people meet again.) However I loved all the details in this book when it came to Beth.
I was a little meh about some of Jim’s story ONLY because it was a lot of job terms that I couldn’t for the life of me remember what they meant so it was a bit confusing. He worked for the Royal Air Force in UK. But the parts of his story with regard to Beth read so sweetly.
I loved this story.
Buy The Long Flight Home at Amazon.com