Novel Flight Novels & Stories

Flight, or 'Flight: A Novel' as I usually see it, centers on Zits, a teenage boy who's been through the foster system and is full of anger and loss. After a violent act in a bank, he's suddenly thrown back through time, experiencing life through the bodies of other people at pivotal, often traumatic moments in American history. He becomes an FBI agent during the Indian Rights Movement, a young Indian boy at the Battle of Little Bighorn, and even his own father. It's not a traditional linear plot about traveling; it's about being forced to live the consequences of hatred and violence from every possible angle.

What stuck with me wasn't the historical scenes themselves, though they're vividly jarring. It's how Zits, who starts as this hollowed-out kid looking for any identity, begins to understand the chain of pain that connects everyone. Sherman Alexie doesn't let him or the reader off the hook—each body he inhabits shows him how his own rage is just one link in a much longer, more brutal chain. The 'flight' is as much an escape from his own self as it is a desperate journey toward some kind of empathy.

By the end, the plot circles back to that bank, but Zits is different. The resolution is quieter than you'd expect. He doesn't have all the answers, but he's finally made a connection, however fragile, that grounds him. The main thrust is really about whether seeing the world through the eyes of both the hurt and the hurter can actually change a person. The book argues, pretty fiercely, that it can.