Wingwalkers

True events enhance this tale of aerial daredevils Della and Zeno Marigold, who in the 1930s entertain East Coast crowds with aerial acrobatics in their well-used Jenny. Della shines as a wingwalker in her skin-fitting silver jumpsuit, while Zeno is the dashing Great War flying ace. Their vagabond life carries them westward to try their luck in Hollywood. Brown’s parallel story begins in Oxford, MS, where Billy Falkner’s childhood passion for flying never wanes, prompting his enlistment in the RAF in 1918, too late for action. Anxious to fly, he forms the Flying Falkners with his brothers, performing crowd-pleasing aerial stunts. A grown-up Bill follows another passion that boosts him to fame in Hollywood—writing poems and stories based on his imagined war exploits. Hungover during Mardi Gras, Bill catches a ride into New Orleans with Della and Zeno. At the bar, he listens to their dream of landing in Hollywood and tries to help, but a drunken Zeno storms out, tired of this fake flyer’s war stories. Soon, Della and Zeno’s prospects vanish, tragedy strikes the Falkners, and William Faulkner (the u from his RAF days) bases his new novel Pylon on his brief encounter with Zeno and Della.