A Waiting Dragon

Some mysteries quietly fade into history, while others acquire maps, radio transcripts, eyewitnesses, disputed photographs, suspicious islands and an apparently inexhaustible supply of people announcing that they have finally solved them. Amelia Earhart’s disappearance belongs firmly to the second category, and in A Waiting Dragon, David K. Bowman takes a fresh and decidedly audacious journey into one of aviation’s most durable puzzles.

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished over the central Pacific in July 1937 while attempting to fly around the world. The official explanation has generally been that their Lockheed Electra ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea near Howland Island. It is a perfectly sensible theory, which is precisely why generations of investigators have found it so unsatisfying. The Pacific is large, the surviving evidence is fragmentary and human beings are constitutionally incapable of accepting “probably fell into the ocean” when there might instead be secret landings, military involvement and a dragon waiting somewhere in the historical undergrowth.

Bowman re-examines the disappearance and advances his own interpretation of what happened, challenging familiar assumptions and venturing into the more controversial territory surrounding Earhart’s final flight. This is not simply another account of a famous aviator who missed a very small island in a very large ocean. It is an attempt to assemble the scattered clues, contradictions and tantalising possibilities into a coherent alternative narrative—and perhaps wake something that conventional history would prefer to leave sleeping.

The result is an intriguing addition to the extensive Earhart library, particularly suited to readers who already know the standard story and suspect that it may be only part of the story. Aviation enthusiasts, conspiracy connoisseurs and devoted students of twentieth-century mysteries will find plenty here to examine, debate and wave meaningfully at other people across the dinner table.

Published by Vaga Books in 2017, this copy is in Good condition. The mystery remains unresolved, the dragon remains patient, and Amelia Earhart continues to generate more theories than most people manage confirmed appointments.

Some mysteries quietly fade into history, while others acquire maps, radio transcripts, eyewitnesses, disputed photographs, suspicious islands and an apparently inexhaustible supply of people announcing that they have finally solved them. Amelia Earhart’s disappearance belongs firmly to the second category, and in A Waiting Dragon, David K. Bowman takes a fresh and decidedly audacious journey into one of aviation’s most durable puzzles.

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished over the central Pacific in July 1937 while attempting to fly around the world. The official explanation has generally been that their Lockheed Electra ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea near Howland Island. It is a perfectly sensible theory, which is precisely why generations of investigators have found it so unsatisfying. The Pacific is large, the surviving evidence is fragmentary and human beings are constitutionally incapable of accepting “probably fell into the ocean” when there might instead be secret landings, military involvement and a dragon waiting somewhere in the historical undergrowth.

Bowman re-examines the disappearance and advances his own interpretation of what happened, challenging familiar assumptions and venturing into the more controversial territory surrounding Earhart’s final flight. This is not simply another account of a famous aviator who missed a very small island in a very large ocean. It is an attempt to assemble the scattered clues, contradictions and tantalising possibilities into a coherent alternative narrative—and perhaps wake something that conventional history would prefer to leave sleeping.

The result is an intriguing addition to the extensive Earhart library, particularly suited to readers who already know the standard story and suspect that it may be only part of the story. Aviation enthusiasts, conspiracy connoisseurs and devoted students of twentieth-century mysteries will find plenty here to examine, debate and wave meaningfully at other people across the dinner table.

Published by Vaga Books in 2017, this copy is in Good condition. The mystery remains unresolved, the dragon remains patient, and Amelia Earhart continues to generate more theories than most people manage confirmed appointments.

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