Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Titled after the US Air Force song, this engaging debut explores the legacy of the Greatest Generation from the perspective of Generation Y, the fallout of war through the eyes of a pacifist, and the enduring human desire for love, adventure, truth, and understanding. Pensive in the wake of 9/11, a young man—our “correspondent between the past and the present”—launches a mission to reunite his beloved grandfather, an American bombardier, with Luddie, the woman who saved him during WWII. Armed only with the address on the back of an old photograph and his grandfather’s memories, the young man begins writing letters to Luddie. Undaunted by her lack of response, the narrator travels to Poland with his girlfriend and grandfather. As they come closer to finding the site where the bombardier was shot down, the letters to Luddie become more personal and the saga of a family with a long and storied history emerges. Beautifully orchestrated and eloquently original, each sentence slowly builds upon the next in a charming style both poetic and engrossing. A tale of soldiers and saviors, of burning and bombing, of fathers and sons and brothers and lovers, this is also the story of what we find when we dare to revisit the past. Born in Iowa in 1979, Travis Nichols now lives in Chicago. An editor at the Poetry Foundation, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Believer, Details, Paste, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and The Stranger. Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder is his first novel.

About the Author :
Born in Iowa in 1979, Travis Nichols now lives in Chicago. An editor at the Poetry Foundation, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Believer, Details, Paste, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and The Stranger. Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder is his first novel, and his second collection of poems is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.

Review :
“A rewarding experience. [Nichols’] sentences repeat and sit inside each other as a sort of Greek chorus that resonates through the book.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Nichols pulls the readers in . . . with breathtaking immediacy. . . . Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder is both original and haunting.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “Nichols handles beautifully the hidden meanings in old family tales heard a hundred times . . . the novel often reads like a piece of music that is wonderfully original.”—Publishers Weekly “A dramatically off-kilter debut novel about wars and the men who fight them . . . We see the Bombardier, an elderly Rotarian and former mayor of a small Midwestern town, rediscovering his youthful memories. His grandson's bewilderment over what to do about the 9/11 attacks highlights the differences between then and now. There's a lot of meaty material here.”—Kirkus “Travis Nichols locates the story in history, the pistol in epistolary. This is crushingly great, altogether original debut that reads like an incantation. I dare you to stop reading.”—Ed Park “This is a beautiful crackpot’s history of America. Travis Nichols takes us on a godly road trip through tobacco, love, and Boom Boom, landing us profoundly still at the world’s loneliest tourist trap. It’s a curious animal version of all those ‘I was looking for’ books because here the animal (the writing) actually changes when it reaches its destination. And happily Off We Go is also a book about a man loving women: ‘A toast,’ I say finally, ‘to the mother's side.’”—Eileen Myles “A rewarding experience. [Nichols’] sentences repeat and sit inside each other as a sort of Greek chorus that resonates through the book.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Nichols pulls the readers in . . . with breathtaking immediacy. . . . Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder is both original and haunting.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “Nichols handles beautifully the hidden meanings in old family tales heard a hundred times . . . the novel often reads like a piece of music that is wonderfully original.”—Publishers Weekly “A dramatically off-kilter debut novel about wars and the men who fight them . . . We see the Bombardier, an elderly Rotarian and former mayor of a small Midwestern town, rediscovering his youthful memories. His grandson's bewilderment over what to do about the 9/11 attacks highlights the differences between then and now. There's a lot of meaty material here.”—Kirkus “Travis Nichols locates the story in history, the pistol in epistolary. This is crushingly great, altogether original debut that reads like an incantation. I dare you to stop reading.”—Ed Park “This is a beautiful crackpot’s history of America. Travis Nichols takes us on a godly road trip through tobacco, love, and Boom Boom, landing us profoundly still at the world’s loneliest tourist trap. It’s a curious animal version of all those `I was looking for’ books because here the animal (the writing) actually changes when it reaches its destination. And happily Off We Go is also a book about a man loving women: `A toast,’ I say finally, `to the mother's side.’”—Eileen Myles