Airman

Set in the late nineteenth century on the Saltee Islands, a tiny sovereign state off the Irish coast, the novel follows Conor Broekhart from his legendary birth through imprisonment, escape, and a desperate fight to save the people he loves from a treasonous military leader.

Conor is born in 1878 during the World's Fair in Paris, when his parents, Captain Declan Broekhart and his scientist wife, Catherine, ascend in a French dirigible with Captain Victor Vigny, a French aeronaut. A sniper's bullet punctures the balloon, and it crashes against the Statue of Liberty's head, then on display in the Trocadéro gardens. Catherine goes into premature labor, and Conor is born while the basket swings against the statue's cheek. The event establishes Conor's lifelong association with flight.

The Broekharts return to Great Saltee, ruled by King Nicholas, an American-born Trudeau heir known as "Good King Nick." Nicholas has abolished taxes and modernized the islands with revenue from a centuries-old diamond mine on neighboring Little Saltee, which doubles as a prison. The king's military commander, Marshall Hugo Bonvilain, head of the Holy Cross Guard, quietly resents the reforms and covets political power.

At nine, Conor and the king's daughter, Princess Isabella, are playing pirates in the king's apartment when Isabella accidentally ignites the chemicals in his laboratory. Trapped on the burning tower roof, Conor improvises a kite from the Saltee flag's bamboo frame, and an explosion's updraft carries both children over the sea to safety. In gratitude, Nicholas knights Conor and hires Victor Vigny as tutor for both children. Over the next five years, Victor trains Conor in fencing, martial arts, escapology, and aeronautics. Together they share an obsession with heavier-than-air flight. Nicholas secretly equips a Martello tower, a cylindrical stone fortification near the Irish mainland village of Kilmore, as an aeronautics laboratory with a wind tunnel.

At 14, Conor has developed romantic feelings for Isabella, which Victor assures him are reciprocated. One evening, Conor spots Bonvilain prowling the castle's serving passages with Victor's revolver. Following the marshall, Conor overhears Nicholas and Victor discussing evidence that Bonvilain is stealing diamonds and working prisoners to death. Bonvilain bursts in, shoots the king dead with Victor's gun, and kills Victor, framing the Frenchman as the assassin.

Conor picks up the Colt and confronts Bonvilain, but his shots fail to penetrate the marshall's concealed chain mail. Bonvilain strangles him unconscious. Guards beat Conor beyond recognition, dress him in a soldier's uniform, and present him to Declan as a captured conspirator. Declan, believing his son died defending the king, does not recognize the prisoner and denounces the "traitor." With his dying breath, Victor had told Conor to find the Martello tower in Kilmore, where the key is hidden with the stone eagle on the gate pillar.

Bonvilain ships Conor to Little Saltee under the false name Conor Finn. Guard Arthur Billtoe brands his hand with the prison's cursive S. Conor's cellmate is Linus Wynter, a blind American musician secretly planted by Nicholas to spy on Bonvilain. Linus advises Conor to abandon his old identity and cultivate an obsession to sustain his will to live. Linus's own obsession is composing an opera called The Soldier's Return.

In the underwater diving bell where prisoners mine diamonds, Conor faces Otto Malarkey, leader of the Battering Rams, a London-Irish gang paid by Bonvilain to beat Conor daily. Using a telescopic mining tool as an improvised foil, Conor defeats Malarkey and proposes an alliance: they will fake the beatings in exchange for protection. Over two years, Conor transforms into a hardened figure. He and Malarkey secretly bury stolen diamonds in salsa garden beds that Conor convinces Billtoe to plant.

When Linus is taken away, Conor discovers a hidden alcove in his cell covered in luminous coral beneath dried mud: Linus had recorded his entire opera on the walls without knowing the coral glowed. Conor begins etching flying machine designs onto the same surface, and the dream of flight becomes the obsession that sustains him.

By 1894, Conor has accumulated seven bags of diamonds and manipulated Billtoe into manufacturing fireworks balloons for Isabella's coronation: hydrogen balloons coated in phosphorus paint that explode when struck by nitroglycerin bullets. On coronation night, Conor escapes through a blind spot in the prison corridor, reaches the outer wall, and seizes the last remaining balloon. His arm tangles in the netting, and the Saltee Sharpshooters, the island's military marksmen, shoot it down. Declan fires the final shot without knowing his son hangs from the netting. A silk parachute slows Conor's fall enough that he crashes through a lifeboat tarpaulin on the royal yacht and survives.

Conor stows away to London and contacts Zeb Malarkey, Otto's brother and a crime boss, who provides money and new papers. He locates Victor's Martello tower at Forlorn Point using the key hidden in the stone eagle's talons. Using the laboratory's equipment and his own prison designs, Conor builds gliders and launches from the tower's wind tunnel at night, flying to Little Saltee to recover his diamonds. Disguised in black aeronaut's gear with goggles and a winged A insignia, he becomes known as the Airman. In a Kilmore tavern, he discovers Linus is alive and brings him to the tower.

Linus urges Conor to expose Bonvilain, but Conor fears provoking the marshall into murdering his family. After secretly visiting Great Saltee and seeing his parents content with their new baby son, Sean, Conor resolves to take his diamonds and start over in America. His raids continue, however, and Pike, a prison guard and informant, sketches the Airman's glider and alerts Billtoe. They ambush Conor, but he fights them off. Billtoe reports to Bonvilain, who deduces the Airman is Conor Broekhart. The marshall and his captain, Sultan Arif, locate the tower, capture Linus, and deliver an ultimatum: Bonvilain will poison Isabella and the Broekharts at a dinner the following night. Linus ignites emergency flares to warn Conor.

Conor abandons America and assembles his gasoline-powered aeroplane, christened La Brosse in Victor's honor, on St. Patrick's Bridge, a shale spit near the mainland. Local boys line the bridge with lanterns as a runway. At low tide, Conor flies the machine across the channel. Beneath his gear he wears a collapsible glider. When the Wall Watch, the island's coastal defense force, destroys the aeroplane with Gatling guns, Conor releases a strap and glides free. Everyone believes the Airman is dead.

Inside Bonvilain's tower, Isabella has used her father's diary, which details the marshall's crimes, to strip Bonvilain of office and place him under house arrest. Catherine instigates a toast to Conor's memory, and Isabella delivers the tribute. Bonvilain, who has consumed a small nonlethal dose of wolfsbane and forced Sultan Arif to drink the same to appear trustworthy, drinks from the poisoned wine first. Before anyone else swallows, Conor crashes through the balcony window and tackles Bonvilain. Catherine kicks the intruder and Isabella attacks with a samurai sword until Conor removes his goggles and reveals his face. His family believed him dead for three years. Conor explains that Bonvilain murdered King Nicholas and framed Victor. During the confrontation, Bonvilain reveals he ordered the sniper attack on the Broekharts' balloon in Paris, linking the novel's opening to his villainy. Bonvilain pulls a hidden lever to release Holy Cross guards, and the Broekharts fight them off. Sultan Arif, disillusioned, walks away. Weakened by the wolfsbane, Bonvilain reaches for a concealed dagger. Declan hurls his ceremonial sword, piercing Bonvilain's chain mail and heart. An updraft carries the body out to sea.

One month later, Queen Isabella plans sweeping reforms, including shutting down Little Saltee and reviewing every prisoner's case. Conor asks Isabella to look kindly on Otto Malarkey's case. He prepares to leave for Glasgow University to study science, promising to return as Isabella's royal scientist. On the Great Saltee Wall, Conor and Isabella share their first kiss. After saying good-bye to his parents and brother Sean, Conor boards a steamship with Linus. On deck, Linus tells Conor that men like them are visionaries, echoing Victor Vigny's words from years before.