Globe Pequot / Lyons Press
Pages: 328
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4930-2530-5 • Paperback • September 2017 • $18.95 • (£14.99)
978-1-4930-2532-9 • eBook • September 2017 • $17.99 • (£13.99)
Peter Stekel is the author of Final Flight, the Mystery of a World War II Plane Crash and the Frozen Airmen in the High Sierra (Wilderness Press), Best Hikes Near Seattle (Falcon Guides), Best Wildflower Hikes Western Washington (Falcon Guides), and a mystery novel, The Flower Lover.
He has published feature stories in more than 700 magazines and newspapers, including articles on aviation, science and nature, Olympic sports, outdoor adventure and recreation, history, theatre arts and entertainment, and celebrity profiles.
In 1975, Stekel received a B.A. in botany from the University of California, Davis. He conducted graduate work in ecology at Humboldt State University and in 1982 received a secondary teaching credential in life science. He has worked as an educator, outdoor adventure guide, laboratory technician, botanist, and plant ecologist.
He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Poignant and gripping, Beneath Haunted Waters reminds us of a side of war we seldom hear about, the high toll it takes outside of combat. Flying into a mountainside at night is just as deadly as flying into a hail of enemy gunfire—and just as painful for the families of those killed. Perhaps even more so, because in the two cases Peter Stekel expertly reconstructs here, years passed before the survivors knew how their sons’ lives ended.
— Adam Hochschild, lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of To End All Wars and Spain in Our Hearts
The B-24 hidden for 17 years in what is now Hester Lake has fascinated me since 1961, the year after it was found. I was then working on a summer trail crew only a mile or two from this wreckage, and heard the story of its discovery from the park ranger, Leroy Brock, who stumbled onto it. So interesting was it to me, I later visited the gravesite of its crewmen in Arlington National Cemetery. In Beneath Haunted Waters, Peter Stekel recounts the history of these plane wrecks with an historian's eye for detail and a story teller's gift for touching the human heart.
— Butch Farabee, author of Death, Daring, and Disaster: Search and Rescue in the National Parks and Big Walls, Swift Waters: Epic Stories of Yosemite Search and Rescue
An expertly written tale about two long missing WWII era B-24s, and the High Sierra Lakes that held them. The fate of their crews, a troubling mystery, is fully described and explained by master story teller Peter Stekel.
— G. Pat Macha, aviation archeologist and author of Historic Aircraft Wrecks of San Diego County, and others
In Beneath Haunted Waters, author Peter Stekel recovers a compelling story of bravery and unspeakable loss from the icy vastness of California’s Sierra Nevada. This wartime story of youthful bravery and the desperate times that put these men at risk deserves to be read and remembered by us all.
— William C. Tweed, author of King Sequoia: The Tree that Inspired a Nation and Uncertain Path: A Search for the Future of National Parks
In Beneath Haunted Waters Peter Stekel unfolds four equally gripping and poignant stories. He takes us into the cockpits to experience the dread of two World War II bomber crews struggling with uncertain navigation and aircraft malfunctions. He leads us into the world of aircraft wreck hunters captured by the mystique surrounding these bombers in the lakes. His deep research illustrates the often forgotten fact that America lost significantly more aircrews during the Second World War in training accidents than in combat in the Pacific Theater. And, finally, he makes us relate to those lost flyboys and grieve for them.
— Randall Peffer, author of The Hunt for the Last U-Boat and Never to Return
Peter Stekel’s Beneath Haunted Waters tells the story of the discovery and investigation into the mysterious disappearance of two Liberator bombers lost in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains during World War II. Stekel expertly brings to life the personal stories of the bomber’s crew and those who uncovered these lost bombers. A great read!
— Nicholas Veronico, author of Hidden Warbirds: The Epic Stories of Finding, Recovering, and Rebuilding WWII’s Lost Aircraft
Peter Stekel has, once again, penned a meticulously researched account that pays homage to America's Hidden Battle, that of the rigors, dangers, and incredible number of lives lost in training.
— Michael Sledge, author of Soldier Dead
Peter Stekel has written a fascinating and highly-readable account of two military training accidents that but for his and the efforts of others profiled in his book, might have fallen into obscurity. Any disaster takes place at the intersection of multiple paths, each one of which has contributed. Beneath Haunted Waters is a highly-readable tour down these side roads that lead us to new ways of thinking about history, warfare, aviation, journalism and civics in mid-20th Century America.
— Christine Negroni, author of The Crash Detectives Investigating the World’s Most Mysterious Air Disasters
Praise for Final Flight by Peter Stekel:
"An invigorated appreciation of the dedication of the men and women of the Greatest Generation."--Michael Sledge, author of Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury, and Honor Our Military Fallen.
"Peter Stekel has captured the history, geography, and the mystery surrounding this inspiring tale of the High Sierra."--G. Pat Macha, author of Aircraft Wrecks in the Mountains and Deserts of California.
"Stekel has breathed warm life into these long lost World War II airmen who disappeared while on a training mission in 1942. Entombed in High Sierra glacial ice for more than sixty years before being discovered by climbers and the author himself, Stekel skillfully weaves the crew's fate in these rugged mountains with his own quest to unravel the mystery."--Eric Blehm, best-selling author of The Last Season and The Only Thing Worth Dying For.
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