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Flying Ghosts

Flying Ghosts is a fast paced adventure story set in Northern Canada and Alaska. Fifteen-year-old Jay Smith's quiet life in the Alaska wilderness is shattered when his uncle, Midnight, arrives in his yellow Norseman airplane with news of war. It is 1942, and Canada and the United States have joined forces in a desperate bid to defend North America against Japanese attack. Together the two countries will build a 1,500-mile highway through the wilderness in only eight months. Suddenly Jay's life is filled with adventure and the colourful characters he meets working along the Alaska Highway

As the highway nears completion, Midnight disappears in the Valley of Lost Planes, and Jay sets off to find him. But will a strange old prospector named Goldbug, who guards lost planes, let him into the valley?

Awards:

Canadian Children's Book Centre Choice, 1994.

Films rights sold, 2000

Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Toronto
ISBN 0-7736-7400-4
List price: $ 7.99 CDN

To order: contact publisher or author at email listed on this website.

Reviews: “Flying Ghosts is a book that makes you want to read faster: you suspect, and it happens to be true, that nothing about this intricate and rapid-paced story will be resolved until the very last page.” Marie Campbell, Quill & Quire. Vol. 60, #1, Jan./94  

“Adventure abounds in this second young adult novel by Calgary author Shirlee Smith Matheson.  . . . The pace is rapid, the characters many and varied, and the mood in constant flux in this novel of Canada’s North.” Joye Hardman, The Calgary Herald, Nov. 6/93