"Adam Oney, the hero of Sam Michel's bittersweet debut novel, 
is rightly named after that first namer. His other forebear is 
Icarus, only in this version, the boy survives to tell his own story 
with surpassing compassion for all."—Christine Schutt

Narrated by eighteen-year-old Adam Oney from his hospital bed 
in a burn unit, Sam Michel's debut novel centers around two boys, 
one black, one white. They meet as eight-year-olds on an Air Force 
base in the Nevada desert where they share the bond of wanting to 
fly, like Adam's father in his Phantom F-4 fighter. Mike, who's 
black, is the son of a former fighter jet mechanic who nurtures his 
bitterness at being forced out of  the military. The two boys navigate 
their childhood through obdurately fixed constellations of race and 
class. Adam loses his father to martinis and his fabled past, his 
mother to Reverend Marsh. He also faces the loss of Mike's 
friendship, and he very nearly loses his life. Throughout it all, Adam 
is buoyed by his talent for happiness and the strength of his 
dreams of flight. This is a story of love and loss, betrayal and hope, 
and the human spirit's desire to forgive and to sustain its early 
passions.


_________________________________________________________

The author of Under the Light, a story collection, SAM MICHEL 
divides his time between Montana and Massachusetts where he 
writes and builds rock walls. He and his wife, the writer Noy 
Holland, are the parents of two children who accompany them 
on their many travels farther and farther south of the border.



What people are saying about this book

"Sam Michel’s Big Dogs and Flyboys reminded me of myself as 
a young writer—more than any book I’ve read in ten years. His 
themes of fighter pilots, basketball, sensitive and romantic boys 
were like walking down a hall of mirrors in my own life. He is a 
writer of power and deep feeling. He needs and deserves to be 
watched."—Pat Conroy, author of The Great Santini, Prince of 
Tides, Beach Music, My Losing Season
 
"Sam Michel is such a smart, manic, virtuosic stylist. He’s also 
a surprising, big-hearted, courageous storyteller, whose 
considerable talent is firing on all cylinders in "Flyer," a book full 
of odd/beautiful language, and the kind of deep insights that 
make you suddenly and newly appreciative, of the world around 
you."—George Saunders, author of Pastoralia, Civilwarland in Bad 
Decline, Bounty-land, In Persuasion Nation

"Big Dogs and Flyboys is a soaring language machine. It is 
also the funny and deeply affecting story of a small American 
family struggling under the big American sky. An astounding 
work."—Sam Lipsyte

"Michel creates a character of enormous, unnerving innocence 
in prose both stealthy and extravagant. The ending is a knockout."
—Joy Williams

"A rich work of fiction whose greatest strength is the interior 
monologue of Adam Oney, whose sensibility informs and shapes 
this fictional world. Adam's voice is brilliant in its range—from non-
stop riffs to laconic and ironic asides."—Gordon Weaver