It’s no wonder that 11-year-old Talitha wants to grow up to be a pilot. After all, her father, Richard, is a training captain with an international airline.
“Talitha dreams of following in her father’s footsteps and becoming a pilot herself one day,” says her mother, Julie Timlin. “She sees her dad head off to exotic locations every week, hears stories of different cultures, and sees photos of fascinating historical sights. She experiences his passion for his career and she never hears him complain about having to leave for the office.”
Perhaps, more importantly, she also has his encouragement and support in following her flying dream.
Watching their daughter get so interested in aviation led her parents to wondering about other kids. How could they become interested in aviation?
“After all, they don’t come across pilots in their everyday life the way they do teachers, doctors, dentists, and policemen,” Julie says. “And with modern day security concerns, the days of visits to the cockpit, where children had the chance to chat to a pilot, are gone.”
Putting their heads together, the couple decided to marry their careers — aviation and writing — to make a small contribution towards inspiring the next generation of aviators.
Drawing heavily on her husband’s expertise, Julie wrote an adventure novel for children between the ages of 7 and 14, about a young aviation enthusiast who finds himself stranded in the Canadian wilderness with a crashed plane that he needs to repair and fly out.
“I was more than happy to write an aviation-themed novel when my husband suggested it,” Julie says. “The ‘tween’ market is flooded with fantasy — dragons, vampires, and witchcraft — so I jumped at the opportunity to write an old-fashioned adventure style book.”
She notes she tried to combine the style of Enid Blyton with the level of technical description in “The Martian” and the inventiveness of “The Flight of the Phoenix.”
“The trick was to come up with something that would make the plane crash dramatic, but that would leave it reparable,” she adds.
Stranded tells the story of Nate, 13, an aviation enthusiast who has mastered simulated flight on his computer and studies aviation textbooks whenever he gets the chance. He’s also picked up an enormous amount of knowledge building a kit plane with his best friend’s father, but he has never flown on an airplane.
That changes when he’s invited along on a flight to Alaska with his best friend, Luke, and his father, Jim, in a deHavilland Beaver.
In Canada, Jim, Luke and Nate collect the Fallon children: Sasha, who is a bundle of energy, very different from her sweet and gentle twin Libby, who is diabetic; Harvey, whose aviation knowledge is almost as broad as Nate’s but with a real passion for medicine; and Emmi, who is accustomed to taking care of her siblings.
When a distracted engineer fails to tighten the plane’s oil filter, turbulence works it loose in flight. Jim is forced to shut the engine down and make a forced landing in the wilderness. A snowstorm results in visibility so poor that Jim hits trees, causing the plane to crash. Jim is knocked unconscious and Luke is left with potentially life-threatening injuries. Most of the vials containing Libby’s insulin are broken.
There is no radio coverage in the remote area and re-routing around snowstorms has left them so far off route they will be difficult to find, even if a rescue aircraft could fly in the atrocious weather.
Nate concludes they only have two choices: Wait until search and rescue teams eventually come across them, which may be too late for three members of their group, or repair the plane so that he can fly them out, a risky strategy that could potentially kill them all.
“It is a monumental decision, especially for a boy who has never really made choices of his own, always content to follow his dominant friend’s lead,” Julie notes.
The oil leak that brought the plane down is simple enough to fix. Nate has watched his step-father fitting a filter to a car in his garage and knows what to do, but they don’t have the right tools, so some adaptation is required.
There are complications that Nate does not expect, however. The box that contains a canister of oil has been ripped from the fuselage and lost in the crash, while a rear tire of the plane has been shredded.
“The children are filled with optimism and determination one moment, and thwarted, frustrated and tempted to bow down to defeat the next,” Julie says. “Finding the courage and strength of character to plough on, they break the problems down, tackling them one at a time.”
Julie and Richard hope children will read the book and get excited about aviation.
“Just as a child reads a spy novel and wonders what it would be like to work for MI5 or the CIA, we hope a young person may read the novel and contemplate becoming a pilot,” Julie says. “It may encourage children to take the next step of visiting an air show or an aviation museum or joining an aviation program or camp where they will get to experience aviation in all its glory.”
The just-published book is available on Amazon and in bookstores. The paperback edition is $9.69 on Amazon.
A percentage of the proceeds of each sale will be donated to charities that help to make aviation accessible to all kids, Julie adds.
Julie is now busy writing a second aviation-themed adventure novel, this time starring a girl.
Another way of reaching out
Julie’s website, JETimlin.com includes lots of information about aviation, from fun facts and a special page called “Aviation Explained,” to pages on Richard’s career, including answers to questions about how to become a pilot, and a page featuring Talitha and what it’s like to have an airline captain for a dad.
There’s even a place where kids can ask Richard a question about anything aviation, from becoming a pilot to his most memorable flying moment.
