#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A decorated former Air Force
pilot. A pregnant flight attendant. A dedicated TSA agent. The fates of
these three, and many others, converge in Danielle Steel's gripping new
novel--a heart-stopping thriller that engages ordinary men and women in
the fight of their lives during a flight from New York to San
Francisco.
On a beautiful May morning at New York's John F. Kennedy airport, two
planes have just departed for San Francisco--one a 757, another a
smaller Airbus A321. At a security checkpoint, TSA agent Bernice Adams
finds a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge bearing an ambiguous--perhaps
ominous--message. Her supervisor dismisses her concerns, but Bernice
calls security and soon Ben Waterman arrives. A senior Homeland Security
agent, still grappling with guilt after a disastrous operation in which
hostages were killed, Ben too becomes suspicious. Who left the postcard
behind, which flight is that person on, and what exactly does the
message mean?
As Ben scans the passenger manifests, his focus turns to the A321, with
Helen Smith as its senior pilot. Helen's military service and her tenure
with the airline have been exemplary. But her husband's savage death in
Iraq was more than anyone should bear, leaving her widowed with three
children. A major film star is on board. So is an off-duty pilot who has
just lost his forty-year career. So is a distraught father, traveling
with the baby son he has abducted from his estranged wife. Sifting
through data and relying on instinct, Ben becomes convinced that someone
on Helen's plane is planning something terrible. And he's right.
Passengers, crew, and experts on the ground become heroes out of
necessity to try to avert tragedy at the eleventh hour.
In her stunning novel, Danielle Steel combines intense action with
stories of emotionally rich, intertwined lives. As the jet bears down on
its destination of San Francisco, strangers are united, desperate
choices are made, and futures will be changed forever by a handful of
accidental heroes.
