Flying To Tombstone

Jerry Hanning is an Episcopal priest and private pilot. With his nine-year-old daughter, Sadie, he migrates from the Midwest to Tucson following the sudden death of his young wife. Coping with an interior struggle over his call and his faith, Jerry searches for new relationships and a sense of purpose. The rebuilding of his life begins as he ministers on weekends in a small church near the Arizona border of Mexico. It is there, especially in the picturesque former mining towns of Tombstone and Bisbee, that Jerry becomes involved in the lives and hopes of a small group of sometimes quirky people. He also finds himself in the middle of the struggle between ranchers, the Border Patrol, and humanitarians over illegal immigration from Mexico. This sometimes brutal and violent struggle reaches a climax in this story at an abandoned airport near Tombstone. Issues of grief, transformation, ethical life, and mystical spirituality are all confronted by Jerry and his parishioners. The narrative action of the novel is confined to a single season of Lent.