A Memoir by Stephen Rodrick
The Magical Stranger
A son's journey into the sea-bound world of naval aviation his father lived and died for — and the long voyage back toward understanding him.
The Story
A father, a son, and the carrier between them
Commander Peter Rodrick was a Navy pilot who flew off aircraft carriers and was killed when his plane went down in the Indian Ocean in 1979. He left behind a thirteen-year-old son. Decades later, that son — now a writer — set out to learn who his father really was by embedding with the squadron his father once commanded.
The Book
Going back to sea
To find his father, Stephen Rodrick spent two years with the men and women of a Navy strike fighter squadron — on the ground, in the ready room, and at sea aboard an aircraft carrier. He watched a new generation of aviators do the dangerous, exacting work that had defined his father's life.
The result is a memoir about grief and inheritance, about the families left ashore, and about the strange intimacy of finally meeting the parent you lost as a boy.
The Author
Stephen Rodrick
Stephen Rodrick is a journalist whose work appears in Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. The Magical Stranger grew out of a feature he wrote about his father and the squadron, and became his first book.
Praise
“A moving, beautifully written account of a son searching for the father he barely knew.”
Gallery
The world of the carrier
Images that evoke the sea, the squadron, and the long horizons of naval aviation.
Read The Magical Stranger
A memoir about fathers and sons, the Navy, and the cost of the work we are called to do.