« The Legend of Little Eagle » – War, aviation, romance, destiny

1944. A very young American with a passion for flying, John Philip Garreau, succeeds against all odds in becoming a fighter pilot. He is sent to England, flies missions over Germany on his P-51 Mustang, quickly becomes an ace, fells in love in London, gets transferred to Corsica, where he meets « the grand daddy of war pilots »: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

With him, Johnny will discuss flying, war, missions, and “the true fake death” of The Little Prince, so profoundly disturbing for him. And he will be there in Borgo when, on July 31, 1944, Saint-Ex does not return from his last mission.

Shortly after, First Lieutenant John Philip Garreau crashes his plane near a little village in Burgundy and dies. In a way, this will shape the destiny of several characters in the US, in England, and in France, many years later.

Nowadays, a French woman, Hélène Marchal, discovers what exactly happened on this day of August 1944 in Verdeil. And she is stunned. She wants to know who this Johnny Garreau was. She has a good reason for that: she would not have been born  had the pilot not acted in a way which, to her, is simply heroic. She owes him her life!

Hélène goes to Montana, where Johnny was from, with one goal in mind: reconstruct his life and tell his story – or his legend. As she writes: « In fact, I wanted to tell his life story as if it were a legend. Because a legend, according to the dictionary, is strongly connected to a key event—in this case one that was a decisive factor in my own destiny—and a legend is an inherent part of the person through whose that event has occurred. A legend, where real and imaginary elements are found side by side and merge together, is more beautiful and powerful than a mere story. »

Read the Prologue of « The Legend of Little Eagle »

Read the first chapter of « The Legend of Little Eagle »

« The Legend of Little Eagle » is a novel translated from the French. It’s on sale on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.UK, Amazon.ca, and Amazon.com.au, as well as on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and all Apple bookstores as an ebook. It is available as a paperback on Amazon.

From Chuck Yeager’s autobiography, quoted in this novel:

Up there, dogfighting, you connected with yourself. (…) With experience, you knew before a kill when you were going to score. Once you zeroed in, began to outmaneuver your opponent while closing in, you became a cat with a mouse. You set him up, and there was no way out: both of you knew he was finished.(…) When he blew up, it was a pleasing, beautiful sight. There was no joy in killing someone, but real satisfaction when you outflew a guy and destroyed his machine. (…) The excitement of those dogfights never diminished. For me, combat remains the ultimate flying experience.