Vietnam veteran Adam is on the run after killing a man in Seattle. He’s been hiding out at an isolated cabin in southern Washington that belonged to one of his comrades who didn’t make it home. It’s almost Thanksgiving, so Adam is out hunting for wild turkey. Near the Columbia River, he spots a log raft covered by a parachute. Beneath the improvised tent, Adam finds a man asleep. Adam wakes the man up and he introduces himself as ‘Tim’. Tim’s story about why he’s there is very flimsy, but Adam is still young enough that his brains are mostly in his pants. The attraction is mutual. Adam doesn’t have a radio or television, so by the time he finds out who Tim really is, the pair are already hopelessly in love with each other. Adam agrees to flee to Canada with Tim, but their plans go awry almost from the start.
I grew up in Portland, Oregon and was a freshman in high school when Dan Cooper hijacked an airliner between Portland and Seattle. After receiving $200,000 and some parachutes in Seattle, the hijacker had the plane fly to Mexico, but he jumped out of the plane somewhere between Seattle and Reno. No verifiable trace of him was ever found and “D.B. Cooper”, as he became more commonly known, has become as much a part of local folklore as Sasquatch. “D.B. and Me” takes the few facts we know about this caper and weaves a plausible, if extremely unlikely, story of what might have happened.
The story is related entirely from Adam’s point of view. He reveals quite a lot about himself as he and Tim get to know each other. Like many young men of the time, Adam enlisted to get out of an abusive home situation. Almost nobody returned from Vietnam untouched by their experiences there. One of Adam’s bigger problems follows him home from the war, which is how he ended up in hiding. It’s quite easy to identify with Adam.
We only get to know Tim, as he’s called through most of the book, through his interactions with Adam. Tim doesn’t reveal many details about his past, but what is shared seems to be very reasonable assumptions based on what we think we know about D.B. Cooper.
This is a fun read with all the humor we expect from this author as well as some very spicy scenes between the two men.
“D.B. and Me” is available from Smashwords or see Bookbub for links to other places where you can buy online.
