In June of 1985, a small private plane, a Piper Cub, crashed on its owner's property in northern Georgia. The pilot, Lamar Chester, was killed. His only passenger, his five-year-old daughter, AJ, sustained severe injuries but lived. In death, Lamar escaped prosecution as a marijuana smuggler. His widow, hoping to protect her child, removed the young AJ from the life she'd known, isolating them from family and friends who had been involved in the smuggling business. AJ grew up to be Artis Henderson (Unremarried Widow), and her eventual readiness to examine the truth of her father's life, their brief but loving relationship, and his end has resulted in No Ordinary Bird: Drug Smuggling, a Plane Crash, and a Daughter's Quest for the Truth, which combines investigation and personal excavation in a searing, moving memoir.
From their few years together, Henderson remembers her father as loving and beloved, and deeply charismatic, although his attitudes toward women in particular appear problematic through a modern lens. She's thoughtful about such judgments, and careful in considering her father's upbringing as a factor in his life. And a wild life it was, with a colorful career as a pilot, smuggler, and ostentatious party boy in 1970s Miami. Lamar became involved in ever-more-risky ventures, until he faced federal prosecution and the plane crash that killed him.
Henderson's work is investigatory and personal. No Ordinary Bird is both research-based inquiry--involving travel to Miami, Georgia, Colombia, Nicaragua, Iran, and beyond--and also a memoir of family, love, and risk. Henderson excels at the subtlety required by such a story, and her telling is intriguing, painful, and cathartic. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia