ARCHIE SATTERFIELD

'Ground Effect' tells the whole story of how Tim got to Alaska

Sunday, March 31, 2002

By ANN CHANDONNET
THE JUNEAU EMPIRE

"Ground Effect" by Archie Satterfield.
Archie Satterfield has written an eminently readable juvenile novel in the "Gentle Ben" tradition - although small planes take the place of big bears.
For the sake of readers who are not aviation buffs, he defines ground effect: "When an aircraft prepares to land on a runway or water, just before touchdown the air trapped beneath the wing creates an air cushion, called the ground effect. While riding on this cushion the aircraft feels like it wants to continue flying. Some people are also susceptible to this phenomenon."
The main character is Tim, a 15-year-old who studies by correspondence at home in Jeffersonville, which is located "just far enough from Juneau to avoid suspicion" - a leading phrase if ever one was penned.
Tim has no birth certificate, and he considers a man known only as G.P. as his grandfather. The year is 1938, Tim learns about art and music through a "weekly cultural experience" from a neighbor, Noel Morrow, a stampeder in the 1897-98 Klondike Gold Rush 40 years before.
Before the first chapter ends, the reader knows that Tim's father, Grant, is lost somewhere in the direction of Atlin, British Columbia. He was last seen flying an orange and silver Fairchild in the vicinity of Mission River.
They find his plane where Grant had to make a forced landing and "ran out of lake," with a mangled propeller almost hidden in the snow. Grant is only slightly injured.
It would be a shame to give away the entire plot. Suffice to say that through a series of carefully plotted and realistic maneuvers, Grant and Tim get marooned together on the same lake, and much of the rest of the novel gives us bits of how they get out of there alternated with details of the reason Tim has no birth certificate, details of his father's past and the identity of his mother.
There is a smidgen too much of Grant talking about his past, excused with the sentence "Situations like this make you think." For the most part, however, this is a novel that succeeds very well. There is discussion of what brings "misfits" north and getting "bushed" and how to manage a lean camp in the wilderness. Any city kid would love it. Any kid who wants to fly will be ecstatic.
Satterfield has done his homework: He acquired maps of Juneau during the period of the book from historical collections librarian Ann Doyle at the Alaska State Library. He climbed around on the Stearman at the Tillamook (Ore.) Air Museum, and got information on flying a biplane on floats from a retired United Airlines captain. Relatives introduced him to biplane owners in Illinois, and a pilot for Northwest took him for a ride in a Stearman.
A former resident of Seattle, Archie Satterfield is author of more then 30 books. A retired newspaper and magazine editor, he lives near France's Loire River.

Ann Chandonnet can be reached at achandonnet@juneauempire.com.


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Another veteran writer on the North turns his hand to young adult fiction with "Ground Effect."

By Debbie Carter
Fairbanks News-Miner


Archie Satterfield's tale concerns Tim West, a self-reliant, 15-year-old who is becoming an excellent pilot. He has no birth certificate, and the mystery surrounding his birth, which his father won't discuss, prevents him from living the life of a normal teenager. Home is a bay far enough from Juneau to avoid suspicion. The bay's residents, a collection of misfits and characters, watch over Tim with affection.

When Tim's father crashes his plane on a lake high on the Juneau icecap, the teen is the only person who knows how to fly a Stearman on floats, the only plane that can take off and land from the small lake. In addition to making a dangerous landing with litter room to spare, Tim must take off in a short distance. His injured father cannot help. This is a story about self-reliance, growing up and making adult decisions.

Set around 1940, "Ground Effect" has a lot of good descriptions about flying small planes over glaciers in Southeast and in the Atlin, B.C., area. Satterfield relied on several pilots for a feeling of authenticity. Any kid who dreams of flying will love this book.

Satterfield is the author of several books about Alaska and the Klondike, including "The Alaska Airline Story," "Chilkoot Pass" and "After the Gold Rush."

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GROUND EFFECT by Archie Satterfield
Reviewed by JoAnn Roe
Flyers of all ages will recognize the authenticity of this story about flying in Alaska, its perils and the sometimes dangerous beauty of the mountain country.

At 15 years of age Tim is a skilled pilot of aircraft that include a demanding Stearman, a biplane on floats. He and his father operate a flight service from a remote lake south of Juneau, Alaska, a community with its share of characters of shadowy pasts but staunch friendships.

The hamlet is an extended family for Tim, who has never known his mother nor why his father Grant avoids explaining the circumstances of Tim's birth and childhood. Tim remembers his father landing near a building somewhere, picking him up, and the fright first and exultation second when the two flew for hours in an open-cockpit plane to Alaska. The youth has never dated a girl, seldom partied with teens his own age, and is woefully ignorant of city ways. Yet he is content in the womb of his "family."

When his father is reported missing on a trip to Atlin, British Columbia, he and an adult friend take to the air. They readily locate Grant, but he has crashed below a glacier on a lake so small that the developing dilemma is how to get him out.

A veteran author of 30 books and countless magazine articles, Archie Satterfield weaves an absorbing saga of how the youth manages to land on the lake, is stymied from leaving, and fights for survival with his father. Confronted with death Grant finally tells his son about his beginnings.

Although Satterfield is not a pilot himself, he has consulted with expert pilots and flown in a Stearman. This reviewer is a pilot familiar with Alaska and recognizes that meticulous research has given credibility to the story.

Adults and teens alike will find the book a page-turner. It is available at or can be ordered from Barnes & Noble and other major bookstores.

(Review by JoAnn Roe, author of 14 books,hundreds of magazine articles and the former owner of a flying service in Bellingham, Washington)