In a straight line from Puerto Rico to Miami and reaching a third vertex that reaches the Bermuda Islands in the jaws of the North Atlantic. The roughness of the sea, the unpredictable weather and some probable phenomenon of terrestrial magnetism have ended up establishing the myth about the incidents of maritime and air navigation.
In this book of Jose Antonio Ponseti we faced, with the natural tension that this mythical area generates, an expedition of simple training for first-time pilots. World War II has already ended. 5 Grumman Avenger planes leave with 14 men in total. They leave well equipped with fuel and with all the planes in perfect condition.
It is December 5, 1945. The young people did not set foot on the ground they had left at 14:10 p.m. that day.
Nothing more unpleasant and disturbing than having to make the death of the disappeared official. Ponseti has been in charge of narrating a story about what could have happened and how it could have happened. Perhaps the reicent opening of classified files by the US administration has made the task easier. Something like this already happened with the enigmatic Area 51, about which Annie jacobsen wrote a documentary work that also makes your hair stand on end.
In the case of Ponseti, this story is even more shocking when presented as a vivid, intense, enigmatic story with the appearance of a telegram in which a missing person informs his family that he is still alive. It is then when the myth of Flight 19 grows and intensifies. And it is from that turning point between dramatic and fascinating where Ponseti unfolds all his knowledge about the subject, brushing it off as the best setting for a mystery novel that gets lost among the jokes of a recent true story.
The reading of the plot leads us between questions that jump from the plane of fiction to reality, that pass from the restlessness of the characters that inhabit the story but that also disturb our own conception of the world.
Undoubtedly one of those novels based on real events that are balanced between the great significance of the truth and the narrative opportunity about so many outstanding threads. With this story Ponseti finds a place at the table next to himself JJ Benitez, At least on this occasion.
You can now buy the novel Flight 19, the new book by José Antonio Ponseti, here: