About the Author:
Eric Goodman is the author of five previous novels including Twelfth and Race, Child of My Right Hand, and In Days of Awe. For many years, he directed the creative writing program at Miami University. He lives with his wife in Mecklenburg, NY, and Sonoma County, California. Read More…
Cuppy and Stew: The Bombing of Flight 629, A Love Story
by Eric Goodman
In November, 1955, a young man in Denver, Colorado, hid twenty-five sticks of dynamite and a crude timer in his mother’s suitcase. In what the FBI would term the first example of American air piracy, United Flight 629 blew up twelve minutes after taking off, killing everyone aboard. Part historical novel, part memoir, Cuppy and Stew tells one family’s story before and after the bomb went off. Narrated by a young girl whose parents died on Flight 629, Cuppy and Stew evokes the not-so-innocent 1950s, and the struggles of Cuppy and Stew’s daughters to survive their parents’ deaths. Prize-winning novelist Eric Goodman’s sixth novel is not only his most moving but also his most personal. His wife’s parents perished on United 629.
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Eric Goodman’s Cuppy and Stew is a Finalist in the General (Adult Fiction)Category at The 2020 Foreword Indie Awards!
Eric Goodman, author of Cuppy and Stew, in conversation with D. M. Barr of Author Groupie.
Praises, Reviews & Interviews:
“A civilian attack on a commercial aircraft was unheard of back in the mid 20th century, when Jack Gilbert Graham smuggled a bomb onto United Airlines Flight 629 and killed all 44 people on board, including the intended target, his own mother. The concept was so alien that no one knew how to react - not the legal system, the airlines or, least of all, two teenaged girls who were suddenly orphaned after their parents were killed in the bombing.
The lives of those two girls and the complicated life led by their parents before they died is the subject of a new novel by Mecklenburg, New York author Eric Goodman. His wife, Susan Morgan, was the younger of the two girls whose lives were upended when the plane went down over Colorado that day in November 1955.”
“Thrilling and romantic can also be used to describe the arc of this book, which is divided into two parts; the first centers on the narrator’s parents and their unconventional love story. When Stew meets Anne (or “Cuppy” as he calls her, short for cupcake), she is working as a secretary for his friend. Stew already has a wife and child, but it’s a loveless marriage; his love for Cuppy drives him to abandon his family and begin a new one. They travel around the world and have two daughters, Susan and Sherry, and their double life reads like a movie — studded with secrets and global adventure.”
“An overriding sense of overcoming the odds unites the romance of part one with the more tragic circumstances of part two. Clear descriptions coupled with entertaining internal dialogue and concise, expressive characterization make the pages fly by. A marvelous narrator and eventful plot make for an entertaining and moving tale that’s sure to please readers seeking inspirational narratives about hard times in history.”
“Cuppy and Stew is completely natural, poignant, and riveting from the first page to the last. An easy read in the best sense of that phrase, and a major work of fiction.”
“Eric Goodman’s Cuppy & Stew: The Bombing of Flight 629, A Love Story reads like a fairy tale—until some pretty remarkable darkness sets in, as the title tells us it will. Part novel, part memoir (the author writes in the voice of his wife), part journalistic inquiry, the dark forests of this tale lead down to the far more treacherous and psychological underworld of the hero’s journey—and a gritty, hard-earned climb back to the light. A most compelling read.”
“The grim tragedy of the first US terrorist bombing in 1955 that killed the narrator’s parents hovers over this powerful story. Readers are given the complicated love story of the two who die on United Flight 629 and the moving struggle of the daughters who are orphaned by the tragedy: ‘It was me and my sissy against the world.’ Cuppy and Stew brilliantly blends the known and the imagined and will stand as a model for new possibilities in historical fiction.”