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    First Light
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    First Light
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    First Light
    Audiobook8 hours

    First Light

    Written by Bill Rancic and Barbara Keel

    Narrated by Kaleo Griffith and Julia Whelan

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A moving story of love, family, and survival against all odds from beloved entrepreneur and reality TV star Bill Rancic.

    Set amid the deep, wild woods of the Yukon, First Light tells the story of Daniel Albrecht and Kerry Egan, a young couple just beginning their life together: in love, engaged, and, as Kerry soon discovers, expecting their first child. While they are flying home from a work trip in Alaska to plan their wedding in Chicago, both engines of their plane catch fire and send the plane careening into a mountainside in the middle of a terrible snowstorm. Kerry is seriously injured in the accident, and Daniel--the one person among the passengers with some survival experience--makes the courageous decision to search for help, hoping against hope that he can return to save his fellow travelers, especially the woman he loves.

    Thus begins a harrowing and suspenseful race against time and the elements, as it becomes clear that not everyone will make it out alive. As the couple's story draws to a close, the surprising truth about the boy's life, and that of his parents' marriage, will at last be divulged.

    A romantic and heart-wrenching debut from Bill Rancic, First Light is about surviving the most insurmountable obstacles-and finding renewal and love just when it seems that all is lost.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateNov 1, 2016
    ISBN9781524703233
    Unavailable
    First Light
    Author

    Bill Rancic

    Bill Rancic is a successful entrepreneur who currently works for the Trump Organization.

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    Reviews for First Light

    4/5

    10 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I was, admittedly, slightly horrified to see WHO the author was but it turned out that I really did like the author, way back when, and this novel was quite good---I would love to know how he made the frozen Yukon descriptions so believable....and very readable in the what's-going-to-happen next aspect. I'm surprised that the author picture on the back of the book does not look anything like the picture of him that I recognized...on the web.
    • 4/5
      The arrival of an invitation creates an opportunity to reveal a long-held family secret. Kerry and her husband take their son on a road trip to the Canadian Yukon for a memorial reunion of a plane crash. I did figure out the twist long before then end of the story, but that did not spoil the reading experience for me. It is a quick read. I finished in an afternoon. There are gruesome scenes so beware. A sort of happy ending for some is the result. My thanks to the author and the Penguin First to Read program for a complimentary copy.
    • 4/5
      If you want to know what it was like to be a spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain, then this is the book you need to read. The author was a public schoolboy that joined the RAF just before the outbreak of war. He signed up in the spring of 1939 and started training as soon as he finished school in July 1939.

      The first third of the book is a very detailed account of his entry to the service and the flight training. Through this we get to know the author as a typical public schoolboy, he struggles with the academic side, but has no problems with the discipline and dealing with being in a service institution. Flying is clearly his passion, and is most of the focus of the book. Other than his struggles with the training matter, and the mental stress of combat flying and dealing with the progressive loss of his friends there is little else in the story.

      There is no bigger picture, or even narrative of the wider progress of the war to put things in context. When he is rushed out of training and posted directly to an operational squadron (no.92) it is because the Germans have invaded France, however we're not directly told this. The closest he comes is when the rest of the squadron patrol over Dunkirk, losing many of the old hands including the CO Roger Bushell (who lead the Great Escape). If you didn't know how the war went then you could be baffled by some of this. Also, there is nothing about the Battle of Britain directly, other than accounts of some of his more notable sorties (the first, some where he has narrow escapes or shoots down or damages enemy aircraft).

      That said, it is a very good first hand account of what it was like on a very personal level. The flights are very well described in some detail. It is clear that Geoffrey Wellum was deeply affected by his war experience and that being an operational fighter pilot represented the pinnacle for him. His tour as an instructor between operational tours is dispensed with in a couple of pages. The narrative between flights shows him moving from an enthusiastic schoolboy to a novice pilot and eventually to a mentally exhausted veteran.
    • 5/5
      I thought I had read every first-hand account of the Battle of Britain. For some mysterious reason family, extended family, friends and enemies think I like them and fill my bookshelves.This one came as a surprise. Written maybe fifty years after, the author wrote at a time the culture of the UK had changed and it was quite acceptable to talk about feelings, thoughts and emotions. The stiff upper lip had relaxed.That makes this book unique – and important.Yes, not many people understand the incredible inner battle that goes on inside you when forced to go by instruments alone: when every instinct tells you they are incorrect. Listen to your instincts as they scream at you that the horizon can’t possibly be there, ‘up’ has to be the other way – and you’re dead.Written from old notes and memories Geoffrey ‘Boy’ Wellum takes the reader through the height of the battle and out the other side – both you and he emerging in one piece though shaken, exhausted and with no little need for a pint of beer and a quiet stream to walk beside.He is breathtakingly good at taking you into the nightmare realm of emotions he experienced while in combat, learning to fly or flying in appalling conditions.Thank you, Geoffrey, for not only an outstanding read but also for the best account of the battle I’ve ever read.
    • 4/5
      This a truly remarkable book. Wellum kept notes during his time training to fly Spitfires in the period before and during the Battle of Britain. In the 1990's he took those notes and wrote this book. He is very open about the stress of day after day of facing death and how it changed him and other pilots from optimistic young men to men who feared each day was their last. He eventually was relieved of combat flying because of stress. This is also a very different view of the Battle of Britain when compared to those written by other famous pilots such as Bader, Johnson and Lucas. This is possibly because Wellum was so young when he started flying combat missions. For that reason alone, it is well worth reading.
    • 5/5
      Of all the Battle of Britain books I have read this is by far the most personal. Mr. Wellum's flying descriptions are the best I've ever read and made me get that old familiar knot in my stomach that I got as a combat pilot in Vietnam. Most pilots are in love with the Spitfire, even in this century. I will most likely never fly a Spitfire but in reading this book, I almost feel as if I've been up for a few sorties. This book is a must for Battle of Britain enthusiasts, pilots and Spitfire lovers.
    • 5/5
      Geoffrey Wellum's stories of his days as a very young fighter pilot sat percolating somewhere on a back burner of his mind for over fifty years before the publication of this book, FIRST LIGHT. And yet somehow he managed to make these memories as real and immediate as if they were only yesterday. Wellum was not quite eighteen when he matriculated directly from his prep school into the RAF. In less than two years he was a Spitfire fighter pilot engaged in some of the most intense aerial combat and dogfights of the war, dodging German fighters over London in the Battle of Britain. At age 20, the victim of stress and fatigue of nearly constant sorties, bomber escorts and other combat flights, he was removed from operational duties, much to his chagrin and distress. After a stint as a flight instructor, however, he was detailed to the secret Operation Pedestal which was instrumental in lifting the Axis siege of Malta. There is something about the stream-of-consciousness narrative that Wellum employs here that just grabs you and makes you feel like you're right there in the cockpit with him as he dodges, feints, and rolls through the skies over England in some of the most furious dogfighting scenes every told from the WWII European theater. Here's a sample -"All over the sky 110s are being chased by Spitfires. My particular Hun takes violent evasive action and I follow. I fling the Spit all over the sky in order to stay with him. This chap is no fool. I'm on to a good one here, he's like an eel, blast him. I manage one quick burst and I'm sure I see strikes on the fuselage ... Think I've got this one. His dive steepens and he starts to turn on his back. I take a quick look round before finishing him off in a nice tidy manner and am just in time to see a 110 diving down on me, opening fire as he does so. Jesus, I've seen him just in time, another fraction of a second ..."This goes on and on, as Wellum recalls how he attacked and dodged, in perhaps some of the most intense scenes of air combat ever written. As I read some of these passages I was reminded of James Salter's riveting novel of the air war in Korea, THE HUNTERS. But it's not all smoke and explosions in Wellum's story. You also feel his fear and see him questioning the powers that be, and wondering how does God decide which side is 'right'. "In any case, why does He allow this sort of thing to happen? Whatever He decides, many thousands of people, 'His children' we are all taught to believe, are going to be slaughtered before it is all over." Wellum was near 80 years old when his story was finally published, but it leapt to the top of the bestseller lists in Britain immediately. This is not surprising, since his storytelling skills are as superb as his piloting was back in 1940. The perspective of the intervening decades has lent a kind of precious wisdom to this story though. And Wellum's humility and plain-spokenness about those days brought to mind another young pilot's story, that of Samuel Hynes, a US pilot from Minnesota who flew scores of combat missions in the Pacific, all before he turned 21 too. Hynes's book was called Flights of Passage. It would make an interesting companion piece fo Wellum's book for any WWII air war buffs. I've already praised and touted the Hynes book. Now I'm doing the same for Wellum's. This is one hell of a good story, filled with action, but also with the kind of introspection that makes it a great memoir. I will recommend it highly.
    • 5/5
      Humbling! Simply humbling to recognise I and millions more in Britain, Europe, the World owe our lives to this 18/19 year old and so FEW of his sort: July 1940 - June 1941 - When Britain really did STAND ALONE against the military might of Nazi Germany (Stalin's USSR was Hitler's ally at the time) only the selfless, unswerving, unrepeatable nerve, courage and skills of Geoffrey Wellum and less than 1,500 like him in the BATTLE OF BRITAIN and the BLITZ saved us all.His story of wartime as a RAF Spitfire Pilot has no equal for the unassuming heroics on a daily basis over the skies of the British Isles and western Europe... Humbling.