Falcons of France

A novel about an American volunteer flying with the French air service in 1917, written by two men who had done exactly that. The flying is technical and unromantic — engine failures, altitude, the mechanics of a two-seater kill — and the attrition is the plot. In a formation curriculum it functions as first-hand aviation history in fictional form, from the last moment when air combat was small enough for one pilot to narrate.

Context: Charles Nordhoff (1887-1947) and James Norman Hall (1887-1951) both flew with the Lafayette Flying Corps, met in the service, settled in Tahiti and wrote more than a dozen books together. Falcons of France appeared in 1929, three years before Mutiny on the Bounty.

Connections

• A Library to Build Great Americans — the 468-title curriculum this card came from; listed in the Ages 13-99+ band under Historical Fiction.
• Charles Nordhoff — the author.
• James Norman Hall — the author.
• World War I — the war these authors flew in and wrote about.
• War — the subject.