Gold in the Sky.
1956 · Melbourne
by Catto, Max.
Melbourne: William Heinemann Ltd., 1956. Octavo, blue cloth (hardcover), gilt letters, 294 pp. Former-owner bookplate; otherwise, Fine, in a dust jacket that has had cello tape applied to the underside but is otherwise quite attractive. From the dust jacket: The real heroine of Max Catto’s new book is called Gold in the Sky, and she is an aeroplane. Gold in the Sky has crashed in a Congo swamp and been given up by the airline as a dead loss. But somebody in that remote region has an eye on her, for Rufus Abercombie, an unconventional professor, and his geologist daughter, Stella, have conceived the fantastic idea of buying her cheap and dragging her in one piece six hundred miles down river and overland to sell her in Tanganyika. Stella, who is the leading spirit, wants an assistant and there happens to be an American engineer down on his luck in the district. But this Dennis is a cynical fellow. He states flatly that the scheme is a hundred per cent cray, and he thinks to himself that Stella, though beautiful, is a pain the neck, not his idea of the perfect boss. But when Dennis’s last luck drains away, he sardonically accepts a part in the extraodinary adventure. How the trio get the half-submerged machine out of the swamp and haul her across the heart of Africa makes a superb story. Dennis’s ingenuity and patience are stretched to breaking-point as he tackles each new hazard the continent throws in his way -- hazards of nature, of man, and of woman, for Stella is the biggest problem of the lot. In the end Gold in the Sky rolls triumphantly on a tow rope along the road to Entebbe. And by that time she is not the only feminie object that Dennis has grown fond of. In this odyssey of an aeroplane that never leaves the ground and of three indominable people who simply refuse to give up. Max Catto has written a magnificent book with every ingredient one could ask for. (Inventory #: 6693fd)