From the tri-cities of Moline, Rock Island & Davenport to the land of the tricolore, the author of LE DIVORCE, Diane Johnson, remembers her life in small town, Midwestern America in FLYOVER LIVES. The title refers to that vast body of Americans who live between the coasts and are therefore constantly being flown over as New York connects to California.

As befits an expatriate with a firm grasp of the cultural clash facing Americans in Paris it should come as no surprise that her immigrant roots can be traced to René Cosset, a Frenchman, who arrived in the New World in 1711. Over the next century, through marriage and business Diane’s forbears found themselves in the small towns of Illinois and Iowa.

At an early age Diane discovered the local Temple of Learning, The Carnegie Library.  Andrew Carnegie’s great gift to his adopted America was the funding for the construction of libraries throughout rural America. They are often the most beautiful buildings in town and remain as  monuments to a time when learning was respected and cherished. It was here that Diane’s thirst for travel was developed along with a very unlikely, at least for a little girl, taste for Captain Blood, Captain Ahab, Captain Bligh and other rogues and scoundrels of the seven seas.

The charm of FLYOVER LIVES for me is that Diane never succumbs to treacly sentiment nor imbues her characters with an inflated sense of nobility but rather assumes the role of an unbiased observer-“On the whole subject of women’s work, I would come to have a nuanced view after I found the diaries of my great-grandmothers and saw that though women then had lives full of responsibility and respect, their positions were earned by ceaseless toil and poignant cares, especially the deaths of children, of all sorrows surely the worst.”

On the subject of unclehood she is most eloquent: “Do men think of themselves as uncles now, in the serious responsible way that unclehood used to imply? My uncles taught me long words, and started me out with a Brownie camera, bought me dolls and books. The point is, though, that I owe my uncles far more than material things– a sympathy for men, for one thing, and the ability to see their point of view trapped in difficult lives.”

At the end of her journey back in time and place I sense that the sophisticated author of THE EXPAT TRILOGY (Le Divorce, Le Mariage and L’Affaire) realizes that the charm and goodness of her Brigadoon-like childhood helped her succeed in a world where those qualities are often absent.

“[A] vivid . . . quest for roots. Johnson strikes an elegiac note in her cullings of family and national history . . . splendid.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Johnson is a felicitous writer, cheerfully alert to irony and absurdity. The unfailing deftness of the prose makes this book a pleasure.”
—Kirkus Reviews

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