McAlister's Way
Richard Marman
eBook
(Ocean Reeve Publishing, April 30, 2019)
What happens when a Vietnam War veteran chopper pilot puts pen to paper after retirement? Imagine the adventures and escapes a young RAAF pilot could, get up to in war-torn Southeast Asia and New Guinea. Just think of a volatile cocktail including the late Robin William’s "Good Morning Vietnam", Mel Gibson and Robert Downey jnr’s "Air America", Eagle comics "Luck of the Legion" and "Apocalypse Now", injected with Richard Marman’s own experience serving with the RAAF in Vietnam and New Guinea - and the result is The McAlister Line! So travel back to a time in quite recent history when so many young people were thrust into conflicts of the politicians’ making just as they are today. And like young men and women everywhere, when put into extraordinary circumstances, the adventures and escapes too, are extraordinary.As an ex-military chopper and heavy transport pilot who has visited many of the locations forming The McAlister Line backdrops, Marman knows what he is talking about. By his fifteenth birthday, Danny McAlister in on the run. He has escaped from a draconian boarding school after seriously injuring the principal. His flight takes him through Northern Queensland to the New Guinea Highlands where he searches for his father, lost while fighting the Japanese on the Kokoda Track. Thrown into an unforgiving adult world he grows up fast and becomes embroiled in union wars amongst cane cutters, joins the crew of prawn trawler in the Gulf of Carpentaria, gets mixed up with smugglers and New Guinea's burgeoning aviation industry. He teams up with ‘Mad’ Monty, an eccentric Afro-American pilot and Angela, the stunning teenage daughter of an English missionary. They must endure a series of harrowing adventures as they journey through New Guinea's Central Highlands and the islands in the Bismarck Sea where they face their final challenge against vicious Filipino pirates and discover the final secret of Danny's missing father.‘...Masterfully handled and quite eloquent ...Wonderful.’‘I liked this book....it covered issues that needed to be addressed.’2012 Australian CYA Writing Competition Judges