Franklin Flyer
Born in 1907, named after the train on which he was born and which was blown from the tracks by a tornado soon thereafter, Franklin Flyer’s life through the 30s and early 40s was filled with as many eventful happenings as the United States itself. And how many men are there in the world who could say they had done the following: talked with FDR, kissed Rita Hayworth, and shaken hands with Albert Einstein? Been stranded in Antarctica, helped discover a zilium mine in Argentina, met and fell in love with a black blues singer in Mississippi, made a fortune during the depression in the pulp publishing business, and worked for the OSS in World War II?
Franklin Flyer was not so lucky with the women in his life, however. Always on the search for the woman in a photograph, his other affairs were both incandescent and brief. Also coming back into his life at regular intervals is the mysterious metal zilium, which promises to be of enormous usefulness to the Nazis, another constant source of irritation and confrontation in his life.
Christopher’s prose, poetic and yet deceptively plain, continually propels and pushes the reader onward. The story is smoothly told, but the subtle hint of mysticism that rises every several pages is allowed to take over completely as it reaches its end. What’s left is a focus that’s frustratingly just out of reach, or so it proved for me. That’s the only downside. There’s a lot of fascinating history in these pages, not all of it real, but just maybe, in a universe parallel to ours?
