Mists of Arltunga

Mists of Arltunga

In the heart of the Australian Outback, a ball of flame marks the crash of a Zeppelin into the rim of the Arltunga caldera where rare threnium is harvested. The disaster grounds the gliders towing nets of Belgian lace through the threnium-laden mists. Sought after by the Allies and Germany alike, threnium gives steel astounding tensile strength. But the Zeppelin's flames bring more than a momentary halt to production. Ginna MacReedy, the burned but lovely sole survivor of the crash, turns camp life upside down, threatening the double-dealing strategies of the camp's overseer and pitting two brothers against each other as they grow to love her. A tale of romance, death, intrigue, chemistry, and flying, set in the Outback between the two great world wars. Jones imagines an alternate-history saga that, like its Australian Outback airborne miners, sweeps and glides with the romance of flight. Its hardscrabble fantasy colony is so richly conceived, so lushly peopled, that it feels like God's honest truth. At heart, it's a tale of brotherhood and human dignity that rises high above an unforgiving world. --Derek Nikitas, author of Pyres, The Long Division, and Extra Life A compelling mystery out of the Australian desert, Jones' proletarian narrative excites the imagination. In the wake of WWI, beneath a code of silence and hard labor, these characters toil in a mist-saturated mining community. When a Zeppelin crash cracks the strict order of their austere camp, they question everything, from the fiber of their human connections to the certainty of their moral compasses. Jones delivers a tightly braided narrative and a heroine full of surprises--a woman capable of saving herself. The Mists of Arltunga soars! --Julie Hensley, author of Landfall: A Ring of Stories, The Language of Horses, and Viable Roger Jones has always been fascinated by the way creatures move through the air, from insects to supersonic aircraft. He has spent his career studying, teaching, and writing about the history of science, particularly aerodynamics. In addition to academic writing, he has published short stories, non-fiction pieces in flying magazines, and a novella-a coming-of-age story about a vegetarian buzzard. He has drafted a monograph on Daniel Bernoulli, the founder of hydrodynamics, a textbook on its history, two flying-involved novels in addition to this one, and a memoir. He lives with his wife, flies powered planes and gliders, and writes in Berea, Kentucky.