Down Around Midnight: A Memoir of Crash and Survival

by Robert Sabbag

Book Overview

A bestselling author tells the terrifying and inspiring story of the plane crash he survived Around midnight on June 17, 1979, Air New England flight 248 crashed into the woods on Cape Cod. The pilot... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670021024
• ISBN13: 9780670021024
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A differant type of survival

When a book has 'memoir" in the subtitle, you can pretty much figure it's not going to be one of those "eat-your-fellow-passengers, climb-out-of-the-Andes type of crash and survivals. And for me, that's a good thing. In some of the previous less positive reviews, the problem some people seemed to have had was thinking the book was going to be an action packed "Survivor Man" type of deal. And of course if that's what you expect and you don't get it, you're disappointed. On the other hand, if you are seeking an insightful introspective, you get that, and so much more. It's as if Sabbag takes you on this journey, (journey to where, he really doesn't know.) and along the way he picks up little odds and ends; some funny, some intriguing, some puzzling and some, useless yet enjoyable none-the-less. We learn of Sabbag's beloved Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and most of its fauna and flora, facts about flying and the flying business, we learn enough rules of physics to get into MIT, and there is a sprinkling of side splitting comic relief. I found the book very satisfying and recommend it.

Surviving the Impossible

Imagine living through a plane crash. Imagine the fog that prevents any view of what's coming, and the unexpected g-force as the plane hits a forest, sheering trees off like toothpicks. Hear the scream of rending metal, of the screech of wings being dismembered, and worst of all, imagine lacking out yet never losing consciousness, not even for an instant. Imagine. You realize you're alive in the sudden silence, trying to understand what has happened, and then hearing another person's voice, and more voices, full of terror and pain. You smell jet fuel and realizing that you've survived the impossible but that you're likely to die when the plane explodes if you don't get out. Now. That's what happened to journalist Robert Sabbag in 1979 in the woods of Cape Cod when he and the handful of other passengers on the late-night flight went down in the fog. This book is about the crash and the journey into that night that Sabbag began it nearly three decades later. It's the story of how the other survivors and their rescuers were impacted by that night, and the more I read, the more I learned about human nature. I learned things I've never even thought about, but that make sense nonetheless. No disaster leaves those involved unscathed, even if they think so, and Sabbag's lean prose imparts everything perfectly. The tension of the night of the crash intersperses flawlessly with the stories of those involved, and I wish I could give it more stars. It's superb.

"You must remember to ensure your survival"

In December 1979 author Robert Sabbag was riding the wave of success; he was, as he tells us, "half a celebrity" following the publication of his first book, Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade. Traveling from LaGuardia Airport to his new home on Cape Cod, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, on Air New England Flight 248. Two miles from its destination at Hyannis, the plane came down too steeply out of the fog and crashed into a remote wooded area. The pilot, who had been pulled out of semi-retirement to fly too many hours with too few breaks, was killed, while the copilot and the eight passengers survived with various injuries. In the blackness of the winter night, the survivors helped each other out of the fuel-drenched plane and secured their own rescue, since the airline had no idea where they were. Sabbag recuperated and went on with his life. What was he looking for when, twenty-seven years later, he began to research and write Down Around Midnight: A Memoir of Crash and Survival? None of the passengers had kept in contact over the years. The crash was NOT, he writes, a "group experience. In the end, survival never is. The trauma is so personal, so individual, and one's response to it is so solitary, that opening it up to varying interpretations threatens the equilibrium that each of us independenty strives to recapture." He interviewed those who were willing and found that none of them had come away unscathed. His research covered the expected ground of post-traumatic stress disorder and the neuroscience of memories. He recreates the context of his life at the time, the fast-track company of the cocaine dealers who were the subject of "Snowblind," his close family ties. He draws the conclusion that after nearly thirty years, his memory of that awful night has seasoned and he is at peace. "Down Around Midnight" is not a suspense story book, nor is it a disaster story. The plane hits the treetops in the third paragraph of the book, and Sabbag devotes the remaining 211 pages to exploring and interpreting what it meant to the survivors and especially to himself, questioning his claim on life after falling from the sky and failing to die. Yet I found it impossible to put down, reading it around a busy work schedule in every moment I could spare until I turned over the last deeply satisfying page. The tight, punchy writing style makes this one of the best memoirs I've read in a long time. As a fascinating story, as an exploration of response to trauma, as a personal odyssey, replete with social and geographical history, saying in 212 pages what a less skilled writer would try to say in 500, this is a book that works. Highly recommended. Linda Bulger, 2009

Planes crash. People survive. But few can spin a tale of survival this compelling.

I met Bob Sabbag a few months before he moved to Cape Cod. He still showed up in New York to see friends and work his book; plane fares were cheap then, so he flew. One June night in 1979, he had the extreme bad luck to be flying with a pilot who should not have been at the controls. Two miles from the Hyannis airport, the pilot made a tragic decision and pushed the commuter plane under the fog: "The plane hit the trees at 123 knots. It lost its wings as it crashed. They were sheared off, taking the fuel tanks with them, as the plane slammed through the forest. In an explosion of tearing sheet metal, it ripped a path through the timber, cutting thick stands of oak and pine for a distance of three hundred feet.... The seat belt held up. Nothing else did. I hit the belt with such force that I took the seat forward with me, ripping it right out of the fuselage." The plane was in a forest that was hard to reach from a road --- not that anyone at the airport, two-and-a-half miles away, knew where it was. The pilot was dead, several passengers were trapped. Sabbag had a broken pelvis and couldn't walk. Oh, and there was a good chance the wreck would catch on fire. The first great story of that night is about the young woman who went for help and the subsequent rescue of the injured passengers. The second is about Bob Sabbag's reaction to his near-death experience, which was pretty much none --- he recovered in the hospital, returned to his house and got on with his life. Indeed, he downplayed the crash so completely that I never thought to drive up and see him in the hospital; when I visited him that winter, I don't recall we talked about that night at all. That's typical Sabbag. As he writes, "I've been all over the world, I've made hundreds of friends, and I've bought maybe three rolls of film in my life." So Sabbag's denial --- let's call it by its rightful name --- lasted for 27 years. A book? "It is not something that suggested itself to me," he says, "and I have a literary agent." 'Down Around Midnight' is Sabbag's belated effort to find out what happened that night. Across the years, he reaches out to the seven other passengers, investigates the pilot and his spotty flying record, and deals with his own long suppressed feelings. What he finds is surprising but not exactly remarkable: a string of coincidences that reveal unlikely links between strangers, life choices changed by the flight, the kind of stuff that might make a writer --- though not Bob Sabbag --- believe in a God who monitors even the wings of butterflies. But the reason to spend a few hours with these 210 pages is the writing. If you've read "Snowblind", you know that Sabbag is a magnificent craftsman. His books are short on verbiage, long on anecdote --- he's a born storyteller, and he plays to his strength. Reading him, for me, is like sitting at his kitchen table in the Old Days: Sabbag drinking one cup of black coffee after another, smoking unfiltered cigarettes, and tal

"This trail did not exist"

After reading Robert Sabbag's superbly economical prose, some cutting to the chase seems in order. Down Around Midnight is one of the best books I've read this year and one of the very best memoirs I've ever read. In the avalanche of Woe-Is-Me memoirs that the publishing industry seems determined to foist upon us this book is a rarity - a tale of tragedy and introspection that actually has meaning. Sabbag asks us, simply, to consider what it means to be lucky. I'm sure that many people like myself whose work requires an amount of airplane travel are fascinated by aviation accidents. Whether that fascination is purely morbid, a twisted hope that one can study up for the big event or just an outlet for fear I don't claim to know. I do know that after a two emergency landings and several unpleasant severe turbulence experiences I've wondered more than once what it would be like to be in a plane crash. What would it feel like? What would I do? Robert Sabbag delivers the answers for his experience right up front. If he's going to tell a story about a plane crash he's not going to hide the main event for last. And that should give you a good idea of the kind of story teller he is: no nonsense, no tricks, and definitely no BS. This is a "slim volume" as the saying goes so it's difficult to talk about it without giving too much away. Sabbag's story is about talking to other survivors of the crash to sort out what happened from what he remembers happened. Along the way he tells us about NTSB investigations, the glory that was the old Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia, g-force, cross directories, life on Cape Cod and the mysteries of memory. Not only does Sabbag never whine - whether he's talking about learning to walking again after a broken pelvis or grappling with "Survivor's Guilt" - he makes this story enjoyable. He balances the tragedy with a genuine enjoyment of life and the people in his life. He doesn't cut himself any slack either, when he says "I was a bigger jerk than usual", you believe it. Still, you wouldn't mind sitting down at a Cape Cod bar for a cold one with Sabbag, he's good company. It's one thing to physically survive an airplane crash, it's quite another to be able to make sense of the events and emotions surrounding it all while telling a compelling and accessible story. Sabbag succeeds on all fronts. This is a book I know I'll be recommending as a smart beach read for this year and years to come.