Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Fighting the Night by Paul Hendrickson - Wait list

Fighting the Night

Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer's Life

by Paul Hendrickson
Fred Sanders
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
Place a hold Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
From the acclaimed and best-selling author of Hemingway’s Boat, the profoundly moving story of his father’s wartime service as a night fighter pilot, and the prices he and his fellow soldiers paid for their acts of selfless, patriotic sacrifice
In the fall of 1944, Joe Paul Hendrickson, the author’s father, kissed his twenty-one-year-old wife and two baby children goodbye. The twenty-five-year-old first lieutenant, pilot of a famed P-61 Black Widow, was leaving for the war. He and his night fighter squadron were sent to Iwo Jima, where, for the last five and a half months of World War II, he flew approximately seventy-five missions, largely in pitch-black conditions. His wife would wait out the war at the home of her small-town Ohio parents, one of the countless numbers of American family members shouldering the burden of being left behind.
Joe Paul, the son of a Depression-poor Kentucky sharecropper, was fresh out of high school in 1937 when he enlisted in mechanic school in the peacetime Army Air Corps. Eventually, he was able to qualify for flight school. After marriage, and with the war on, the young officer and his bride crisscrossed the country, airfield to airfield, base to base: Santa Ana, Yuma, Kissimmee, Bakersfield, Orlando, La Junta, Fresno. He volunteered for night fighters and the newly arrived and almost mythic Black Widow. A world away, the carnage continued. As Paul Hendrickson tracks his parents’ journey, together and separate, both stateside and overseas, he creates a vivid portrait of a hard-to-know father whose time in the war, he comes to understand, was something truly heroic, but never without its hidden and unhidden psychic costs.
Bringing to life an iconic moment of American history, and the tragedy of all wars, Fighting the Night is an intense and powerful story of violence and love, forgiveness and loss. And it is a tribute to those who got plunged into service, in the best years of their lives, and the sacrifices they and their loved ones made, then and thereafter.
This program includes a bonus PDF with photographs, referenced in the book, that are essential to the listening experience.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 7, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593825433
      • File size: 287855 KB
      • Duration: 09:59:41

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 12, 2024
      Biographer Hendrickson (Plagued by Fire) offers an intimate exploration of the life and military career of his father, U.S. Army Air Corps pilot Joe Hendrickson (1918–2003). Probing his family’s history of violence, the author searches for the root of his father’s anger and frustration, which was worsened by wartime PTSD. Born in rural Kentucky and forced to leave home at 19 to ease his family’s financial burden during the Great Depression, Joe joined the Army four years before Pearl Harbor. He trained as a pilot and eventually flew the P-61 Black Widow, the first U.S. aircraft designed as a night fighter. In March 1945, less than a month after the capture of Iwo Jima, with pockets of Japanese resistance still lingering on the island, his squadron was assigned to fly nightly raids from Iwo Jima against nearby Japanese-held islands. Four days after their arrival, the remnants of the Japanese Army launched a desperate nighttime attack, killing six members of the squadron while Joe and others were holed up in a tent, armed only with pistols. The resulting carnage stayed with him for the rest of his life, though he rarely discussed it. Hendrickson closely and sinuously narrates the painstaking process of piecing together his father’s wartime exploits and life story. Coupling a poignant personal journey with propulsive aviation action, this WWII history flies high.

    • Library Journal

      December 6, 2024

      Biographer Hendrickson (Hemingway's Boat) explores the life of his father, pilot Joe Paul Hendrickson. In 1937, Joe enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a mechanic. He later trained to be a pilot and, in 1944, joined a night-flying squadron. Joe was deployed to Iwo Jima, where his squadron flew some 75 nighttime missions in planes known as P-61 Black Widows. His young wife and children waited out the war in Ohio. After the war, Joe became a successful pilot for a major airline, but his home life was damaged by his fits of rage and violence toward his wife and children. In this memoir, his son strives to understand how the pressures of the war affected his father. Using military records, diaries, and personal interviews, Hendrickson lays out his father's history, as well as the histories of the men who shared Joe's journey. Narrator Fred Sanders delivers a straightforward reading of the story, offering solid pacing and clear enunciation. The author reads his epilogue with feeling. Photographs and a source list are included in an accompanying PDF. VERDICT Hendrickson's account will appeal to listeners interested in World War II and the psychological aftereffects of war.--Joanna M. Burkhardt

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading
Check Out What's Being Checked Out Right Now