The Pilot's Wife (1998) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

show spoilers

Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Kathryn Lyons: married sixteen years to a pilot, Jack, that she finds she did not really know her husband. A highschool history and band teacher. Has one daughter, fifteen year old Mattie
• "Mattie" - Matigan Lyons: Daughter of Jack and Kathryn, fifteen, bright and rebellious. She has a special relationship with her dad - very close.
• Jack Lyons: pilot, killed in a crash, Kathryn's husband
• Robert Hart: The Union representative sent to help Kathryn after the plane crash that killed her husband. A divorced, former alcoholic with a caring, kind nature, and secrets.
• Julia: Kathryn's 78 year old grandmother who brought her up, when her irresponsible parents could not/would not before their deaths when she was in college. Owns an antique store to support herself. She is very close to her great-granddaughter Mattie as well. Sensible. reliable and loving.
• Muire Boland: former flight attendant for Vision Airlines. Irish woman now living in London.
• Dierdre: Muire Boland's young daughter
• Rita: small, blonde woman from chief pilot's office ther at Kathryn's house to help herairline
• Trevor Sullivan: British Flight Engineer on the Vision plane that crashed. Pulled soething out of Jack's flight bag in the air
• Taylor: Friend of Mattie's
• Father Paul LeFevre: Catholic Priest who helps plan Jack's Memorial service
• Philbrick: Hard-drinking, dirty-minded man in the community
• Dick Somers: from the Safety Board
• Matigan Rice: Jack's mother, who died when he was nine. but is actually trice married and divorced and in a Minnesota nursing home with Altzeheimers
• Bobby Hull: Add a description of this character.
• Roger Martin: First Officer whose headset was not working in the lane, triggering the search in Jack's bag to see if he had a spare set
• Barbara McElroy: friend with a daughter, Roxanne, Mattie's age. Her husband is a Cod fisherman

Quotes edit see section history

• “Actually, Kathryn wished her daughter would sleep for months in a peaceful coma and then awaken to a consciousness dulled by time, so that she would not be hit again and again with the pain that was always absurdly and cuttingly fresh.”

• “She wondered, and not for the first time, if a woman could forgive a man who'd betrayed her. And if she did, was that an affirmation? Or was it merely foolishness?”

• “To leave, after all, was not the same as being left.”

• “And she thought then how strange it was that disaster - the sort of disaster that drained the blood from your body and took the air out of your lungs and hit you again and again in the face - could be at times, such a thing of beauty.”

• “Sometimes, she thought, courage was simply a matter of putting one foot in front of another and not stopping.”

• “She understands then, in a way she has seldom been allowed to know such things in her eighteen years, that she holds it all in her hand at the moment, that she can wrap her fingers around it and grasp it tightly and never let it go, or she can open her hand, lay open her palm and give it away. Just give it away, as simply as that.”

  Kathryn

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• Sometimes, she thought, courage was simply a matter of putting one foot in front of another and not stopping.

  Highlighted by 22 Kindle customers

• To be relieved of love, she thought, was to give up a terrible burden.

  Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers

• they, like all the other couples Kathryn has ever known, live in a state of gentle decline, of being infinitesimally, but not agonizingly, less than they were the day before.

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• The difficulty with not thinking about the immediate future, she decided, was that it left one unprepared for its reality.

  Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers

• Odd, she thought, how intensely you knew a person, or thought you did, when you were in love — soaked, drenched in love — only to discover later that perhaps you didn’t know that person quite as well as you had imagined.

  Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers

• A dedicated adulterer causes no suspicion, she realized, because he truly does not want to be caught.

  Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers

• But she wondered then: In a man’s mind, who was the more important wife — the woman he sought to protect by not revealing the other? Or the one to whom he told all his secrets?

  Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers

• She thought about the impossibility of ever knowing another person. About the fragility of the constructs people make. A marriage, for example. A family.

  Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers

• And she thought then how strange it was that disaster — the sort of disaster that drained the blood from your body and took the air out of your lungs and hit you again and again in the face — could be, at times, such a thing of beauty.

  Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers

• She didn’t think Jack had ever felt the coming and going in quite the same way she had. To leave, after all, was not the same as being left.

  Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• London
• Boston
• Belfast
• Portsmouth
• U.k.
• Heathrow
• Atlantic
• Malin Head
• Ireland

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Sea Glass, and followed by Body Surfing.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Anita Shreve (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3569.H7385 P55 1998
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Add a note to help parents select a book for a child.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( S ) › Shreve, Anita
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary