Behind every skyline there are neighborhoods, relationships, people, and stories …
FLYING BLIND
A Romantic Suspense
Some inside information
This novel has been a long time in the making and probably began with my father, Bev Jackson, who, with my mom, pastored small churches in logging and ranching villages in the northwest. He’d also worked for Lockheed Aircraft Company during the war and had developed a love for aviation. As I entered adolescence, he left the pastorate to learn to fly and obtain his A&P (airframe and powerplant) license so he could become a missionary pilot. The transition didn’t happen as quickly as he’d hoped, but during my high school years he owned and rebuilt two airplanes, the second of which was a Cessna. He let me help, got me jobs at the airport each summer, and took me flying for hours and hours. Unfortunately, by the time he was prepared to apply to his chosen mission agency, it had set a new age limit for incoming pilots, and he was one year over that limit.
Like me, my college roommate, Dean Berto, loved cars and somehow got permission to rebuild the engine of his Buick while it was parked near the dining hall. We lost track of each other after graduation. But when I discovered he’d become a pilot for Missionary Aviation Fellowship, serving many years in Africa and Central America, I asked him to review this story to make sure I hadn’t “crashed” Nick’s plane.
In recent years, I’ve admired Jim Fitz, a church friend who has taken many trips to Colombia to work for peace between the FARC, other revolutionary groups, the Colombian military, and some of the paramilitaries. His dangerous work yielded some remarkable testimonies of Christ’s transforming love in the midst of violence.
The late Lee Hough was our agent when I first conceived of this book. He believed in it wholeheartedly but was unable to find a publisher for it at the time. I was tempted to give up, but Robert Peterson, a missionary in Colombia, encouraged me and arranged for Hermano Santiago, one of the members of his little church, to take some three hundred photographs for me along the Magdalena River where this story is set. In telling Hermano what I wanted pictures of, I never described Nick’s plane, but among the photos Hermano sent back was a distant, somewhat fuzzy shot of a Cessna 185 sitting on the ramp of the Neiva airport, equipped and painted exactly like Nick’s plane. I pinned a copy of that photo beside my desk as a reminder that someday I needed to finish the story.
Sephanie Boogaard’s husband is a pilot for an aviation missionary team in South America that does much the same work Nick did in supporting other missionaries. His family was also part of a missionary base in Colombia that had to be closed due to FARC threats and kidnappings. And Sephanie is close friends with a missionary who had been captured by FARC, so her input was invaluable in bringing authenticity to this story.
I couldn’t have written this book without the constant encouragement and help from Neta Jackson, my wonderful wife and most-excellent editor. I also need to thank Fernando Mercado for correcting my rusty high school Spanish and Michelle Redding for copy editing the manuscript.
And finally, I must thank Dr. Norm Blair, friend and retinal ophthalmologist God used to restore my vision after I lost the sight in my left eye. I do not have diabetes like Nick, but my vision problems were similar to those diabetes can create. To read more about my personal eye saga, click HERE.
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If you like this book, you might enjoy Harry Bentley's Second Sight 
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Castle Rock Creative
ISBN: 978-0-9982107-3-5
eISBN: 978-0-9982107-4-2
Paperback: 276 pages
List Price: $14.99 plus S&H
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Dave & Neta at age 18
© 2013, Dave & Neta Jackson