2023-05-31 16:41:59
For Newman, a onetime bookseller who lives in Phoenix, that joke came true — and the subject matter touches on scenarios that even the most white-knuckle fliers might not dare to imagine. In her first novel, “Falling,” a pilot’s family has been kidnapped and will be killed unless he crashes the plane.
Her latest nail-biter, “Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421,” follows the survivors on a plane that plunges into the Pacific — and then into the depths of the ocean while a frantic rescue operation unfolds on the surface. The novel came out Tuesday, just in time to terrify the throngs of travelers setting out for summer vacations.
Newman said both ideas came to her during quiet moments as she worked red-eye flights. She worked on the first book while flying, writing by hand on cocktail napkins or on the back of the catering bill.
After working for Virgin America and Alaska Airlines, she was furloughed during the early days of the pandemic and never returned to the skies. Simon & Schuster announced a seven-figure deal for two books in February 2021, and her best-selling debut novel published that summer. Both novels sparked bidding wars for the film rights, and a third book is in the works.
“You don’t work in an industry like aviation for 10 years and only have one idea like that,” she said.
Newman’s inspiration for “Drowning” came as she flew yet another red-eye from Hawaii to Los Angeles and thought regarding how she was gazing out the window at a void. If something went wrong, she wondered, how would anyone save them? How would the people on board save themselves?
Despite the nightmare scenarios, Newman said the book is ultimately regarding rescue, hope, resilience, and survival, with a focus on one fractured family.
“I think that people, once they realize that, their attitude shifts and the fear is not the predominant emotion,” she said.
But still, Newman said, passengers should want their flight attendants and pilots to dwell on those worst-case scenarios.
“We are trained and conditioned to constantly be thinking regarding, in the unlikely event that something goes wrong, what’s it going to look like and what am I going to do regarding it?” she said.
Newman tosses in some of the more common crises that unfold in the air, like what can happen to a laptop in extreme turbulence (it gets “lodged into the roof of the plane like an axe without a handle”). A passenger needs an EpiPen, but the plane’s first-aid kit doesn’t have one — an issue that travelers rights groups have been hammering.
She said it’s been fun to raise a curtain on why flight attendants ask passengers to do things like stow their large objects or bring their seat back up; it’s not to control people or make them uncomfortable.
“Everything that a flight attendant asks you to do, I assure you, it’s not personal,” she said. “Everything we ask you to do is for your safety and your protection.”
In the acknowledgments for “Drowning,” Newman thanks the aviation community for their support of the books, and notes that she’s seen pictures of crew reading her novel in the jump seat. She said the reception has been “truly overwhelming and beautiful” from the industry — including her mother and sister, who have both worked as flight attendants.
“I think the aviation community has really appreciated someone on the inside sort of giving a realistic depiction of what it’s like on the line,” she said. “The reception has been great because both of my books depict flight attendants as the heroes that they are.”
She thinks the most misunderstood thing regarding flight attendants is that their main job is to pass out snacks and drinks.
“Service is just something we gladly provide,” Newman said. “But if you have a heart attack, you know, I’m not going to bring you a Diet Coke. I’m going to bring the defibrillator and I’m gonna restart your heart.”
As a full-time writer now, Newman said she’s living her dream — but she misses some aspects of flying: the crew, the travel, “the passengers, most of them.” She considers herself an aviation geek and set both of her books on Airbus planes (an A320 and A321).
“Those were my planes,” she said. “That was my home away from home.”
For now, she’s working on an adaptation of “Falling” for Universal Pictures, writing her third book and figuring out logistics for an upcoming book tour that includes the challenge of packing for 12 author events. (Newman will appear at Politics and Prose in D.C. on Sunday.)
And when she travels now, Newman said she thinks regarding her flights in a totally different way: as source material. She said she doesn’t sleep or read or watch a movie.
“I’m looking around, I’m going, ‘Okay, what else on here might I potentially break and then have to fix?’” she said. “How else might this go crazy and we have to figure out a solution?”
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