Departure 37 reads like a spooky episode of The Twilight Zone. Twisting and turning, exposing the audience to an extremely unsettling and improbable scenario that scares you enough to make you wonder if it’s more feasible than you realize. Scott Carson has crafted a gripping, mysterious and chilling historical sci-fi novel that will leave you uneasy and reflective.
Hundreds of commercial pilots receive calls from their mothers, begging them not to fly today. While that’s concerning on its own, it’s even stranger considering that the mother’s deny making the calls…and some of the mothers are dead. While the powers that be in the US government search for answers, a teenage girl in Maine finds a balloon at a famous B-52 crash site. The balloon is carrying a strange note and an old watch that belonged to a brilliant physicist named Martin Hazelton, who worked on top secret projects for the US military over 60 years ago. Now, everyone involved must play their part to figure out exactly what is going on…and stop a long dead cold war program from starting WWIII.
This story builds suspense and tension by moving between characters and timelines that are more than 6 decades apart. With this approach, readers get a slow and steady drip of past and present information that converge at precisely the right time to illuminate the full truth and provide an emotional weight to what has transpired. And while you’re trying to comprehend some crazy concepts you wouldn’t possibly imagine in your wildest dreams, you’re also feeling a strong connection to the tragic nature of almost every character contained within the pages of Departure 37.
It’s a bit disorienting, but in the way that only good books can achieve by making you think and feel at the same time. Especially if they leave you with a few questions in the end that keep you awake at night trying to parse out the answers. And rest assured, Departure 37 will certainly stick with you long after you finish it.
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