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jelisela's review against another edition
4.0
I loved the story, but the editing was terrible. Quotation marks were used at random, there were a bunch of incomplete sentences, and some of the sentences were missing periods at the end. If you can look past that, it's a great, quick read.
sheltzer's review against another edition
3.0
Apparently I have a thing about WWII planes crashing in the great white north. Last year I read about the Grumman Duck in Greenland, this year I followed the story of Leon Crane who crashed in the interior of Alaska.
Crane's bomber was out for a routine run to test out the feathering on the propellers when an engine stalled out and the plane crashed. Crane and one other crewmen were able to jump out of the plane, but only Crane survived. He did so by walking out of the forest to safety. It took 81 days in the Alaskan winter for him to do so. Good fortune smiled on him in that he found a cabin with a cache of supplies which allowed him to recover from the crash's aftermath and regain the feeling in his hands as well as upgrade his winter gear.
The story itself is relatively simple. It's not as fleshed out as it could have been, not by fault of the author, but because Crane appears to have suffered from survivor's guilt and wouldn't talk much about his ordeal.
My only other complaint about the book is that Mr. Murphy found interesting tidbits that were tangentially related to the main story and stuck them into the narrative, disrupting the flow of the book. I would have preferred these as foot/end notes or in an appendix of some kind.
An interesting read, made more interesting having lived in Fairbanks for 3 years so I understood the dangers of the weather and the rough geography of the area.
Crane's bomber was out for a routine run to test out the feathering on the propellers when an engine stalled out and the plane crashed. Crane and one other crewmen were able to jump out of the plane, but only Crane survived. He did so by walking out of the forest to safety. It took 81 days in the Alaskan winter for him to do so. Good fortune smiled on him in that he found a cabin with a cache of supplies which allowed him to recover from the crash's aftermath and regain the feeling in his hands as well as upgrade his winter gear.
The story itself is relatively simple. It's not as fleshed out as it could have been, not by fault of the author, but because Crane appears to have suffered from survivor's guilt and wouldn't talk much about his ordeal.
My only other complaint about the book is that Mr. Murphy found interesting tidbits that were tangentially related to the main story and stuck them into the narrative, disrupting the flow of the book. I would have preferred these as foot/end notes or in an appendix of some kind.
An interesting read, made more interesting having lived in Fairbanks for 3 years so I understood the dangers of the weather and the rough geography of the area.
ashiva's review
2.0
For a story with a lot of missing pieces, it's ok. The author uses a lot of anecdotes and asides as fillers, some of which are interesting, but most of which are not. Not a lot of meat about the actual survival. Would have been better as a long piece in National Geographic, but then the author would have foregone the extra money.
bmwpalmer's review against another edition
3.0
Good, but not great. A book about such an amazing story of survival should have been better than this. As it was, I think source material was thin, so the author had to grasp a little. It's funny, because the book I read just before this one was always taking pleasant side-trips into peripheral characters or events, and I really enjoyed it. But this book's side-trips took away from the strength and momentum of the main story. It reminded me of Victor Hugo - in [b:Les Misérables|24280|Les Misérables|Victor Hugo|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1411852091s/24280.jpg|3208463], for example, if a character passes, say, a well, then we get a hundred pages about that well and how it came to be there. Much of the same is going on in this book, and it drags down the whole story.
nkmeyers's review against another edition
3.0
Voice actor maybe or maybe not the best fit for this survival history - definitely not a survival story - the facts and a first person linear account of the survival story presented here could have fit in Reader's Digest, but our survivor, Leon Crane was reticent about telling his tale and what we have here is an (overly?) ambitious compilation of many interweaving histories and stories. The reader is presented with a history of the alaska of WWII and 1943 along with plenty of aviation, military and Alaskan/Yukon backstory, a review of the search, of the accident report and accident investigation, the re-telling of Crane's survival tale itself, and some backstory about the others lost in the crash and how their survivors mourned them/what they left behind.
What is strongest here is the author's admiration for the challenges overcome by aviators and residents of the 1940s Yukon as well as how contemporary forensic investigators tackle the challenges they face today. The author more than acknowledges how information and closure are important to survivors and descendants of those lost in war while at the same time respecting the outward quietude Crane adopted toward his own survival story -it's presented carefully here and I'm one reader that was impressed it was handled neither as an expose or as a heroes' tale for the recovery or investigative teams.
What is strongest here is the author's admiration for the challenges overcome by aviators and residents of the 1940s Yukon as well as how contemporary forensic investigators tackle the challenges they face today. The author more than acknowledges how information and closure are important to survivors and descendants of those lost in war while at the same time respecting the outward quietude Crane adopted toward his own survival story -it's presented carefully here and I'm one reader that was impressed it was handled neither as an expose or as a heroes' tale for the recovery or investigative teams.
michaelkerr's review
3.0
The only survivor of a WW2 plane crash in remote, frozen Alaska, Leon Crane - with a few bits of incredible luck - manages to walk out of the wilderness in the dead of winter. This is a well-researched book, but even so, there just isn't enough material in the survival story for a book-length treatment. Murphy therefore gives lots of detail about the families involved, the Air Force search, the recovery of the plane (many decades later), and some of the old salts Crane encounters. It's all pretty interesting, but the character of Crane is never very well explored. 3.5 stars.
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