Title: Tailspin
Author: John Armbruster
Genre: Nonfiction, Biography, History
Pages: 422
Publication Date: 30 Apr 2022
StoryGraph* Moods: Emotional, Challenging, Tense
How I Stumbled Upon This Book: book club
Other Books by this author:
*StoryGraph also offers content warnings.
Description: Gene Moran, a World War II tail gunner (someone who sits at the rear of military aircraft responsible for defending against rear attacks) fell four miles without a parachute, survived, was captured by the Germans, spent eighteen months as a prisoner of war, and then was marched six hundred miles across central Europe. And until this book was published, his family didn’t know most of what he went through.
John Armbruster leans of Moran’s incredible fall and asks to meet with him, to interview him, and to write his story. As the story unfolds, Armbruster faces his own ordeal when his wife is diagnosed with brain cancer.
Why I recommend this book: I’ll admit that I wouldn’t have picked this book up on my own – I read it for book club, and I’m glad I was assigned the task. As someone who reads more than her share of World War II historical fiction, I’ve read very little nonfiction about this time (it’s easier to put some distance when the tag ‘fiction’ is involved). That all being said, I gobbled this up. Gene Moran’s story is one of resilience in the most extreme way. (While Armbruster’s own story, which he braids into the telling, is also interesting – I will admit I wished it had been written on its own. I kept reading quickly through those sections to get back to Moran’s.)
“If I don’t read it down here, I’ll read it up there.” ~ Gene Moran to John Armbruster, Tailspin
Ami Maxine 