Michael Blake
Academy Award Winner
Best-selling Author
Dances With Wolves
AIRMAN MORTENSEN
A humorous and tender story of first love, of a boy on the brink of manhood and a nation on the eve of change.
It is 1966 and eighteen-year-old Airman Mortensen has gotten into trouble on a U.S. Air Force base in the southwest.
He has disobeyed an officer's order and his punishment begins with permanent latrine duty. He spends day after uncertain day cleaning bathrooms while the paperwork for a court martial makes its way slowly through channels.
But at the point his life seems darkest, the young airman meets Claire Brill, the base commander's daughter. They fall in love with each other, surrendering completely to the intensity and beauty of first love. Their union triggers a key drama in Airman Mortensen's life, all of it set against the backdrop of Saturday nights dances, surprise inspections, visits from relatives, and the constant search for places to be alone.
At its core, Airman Mortensen is about the time in life when purity of heart and rebellion are inextricably mixed. Luminous and precise, Blake's voice captures the restless and indomitable spirit of youth which inhabits us all.
Michael Blake in the latrine
Walker Air Force Base, 1967
"If you long to revisit your youth, or have your youth confirmed, read this book."
-- Los Angeles Times
"By turns comic, melancholy, and
strangely jubilant... A fine book."
-- Jim Harrison
"MORTENSEN puts new flight of comedy on the launching pad... Overtones of a winged 'M*A*S*H*.'"
-- VARIETY
"Not deep or complicated, this is entertaining reading..."
-- Library Journal
First published 1991 by
Seven Wolves Publishing
2nd Hard Cover Edition 2002
266 pages
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