Firth's Chasm

In the Blink of an Eye

By: Travis James

Narrated by: Mike Carnes, Stephanie Nemeth-Parker

Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

On a good day, any sane person could never imagine what it would feel like to be on a doomed crashing jetliner, much less live to tell the tale.

A combination of fiction and nonfiction - impossible to tell which - this is the story of one man who lives to tell the story after the jetliner he is on coming from Asia starts breaking apart in a storm at the Arctic Circle above Canada.

Living through the experience is horrendous enough by itself, but when Travis James realizes that his life is thought to be forfeited in the wreckage and there is no help coming? He goes into survival mode as his damaged body wreaks havoc and keeps him trapped in the wilderness until he heals enough to start traveling south to safety.

A man of means, his aching to return to the family that believes he is dead is the driving force that pushes him to the limits and beyond his abilities as the unfriendly terrain takes its toll.

When the push south finally begins, the trail is littered with agony and death as the civilized world refuses to acknowledge that there were any survivors or that he is anything other than a homeless man.

A disfigured Travis is constantly trying to decide whether to try to join his family, knowing that he no longer looks quite the same, or to wander off into the sunset and save his family more grief.

Some names have been changed to protect the innocent....

©2020 Travis James (P)2021 Travis James

Read and Listened to both

I saw an audible review called “drawn out “on this novel. So I am going to put in my two pennies worth for a few reasons and at a risk of being drawn out myself. Mind you I don’t consider this a review even though I read the book and also listened to the audio version.
It might not be fair as I believe I knew the author back in the day and definitely know where some of the story came from. I’ll tell you at the end why I’m even writing this against my better judgment.
First let me say I was a contractor for an OGA back in the 80s and 90s and like the author I had a nickname and was known as the “Marmot”,of that I am unashamed, and some still refer to me as such.
On a road trip with my girlfriend one day she was reading a book and asked me if I had ever heard of a guy in my travels by the name of the” Tailor”. I told her I had worked with a guy back in the 80s from NJ that they called the Tailor, and we used to say he was half Italian and half crazy. She showed me the book cover and my eyes bugged and I hit the next exit ramp.
I knew that guy and I knew that story, or event and to Miss V‘s point Of it being drawn out it was over in less than a month in real time. Maybe it’s the Tailor that wrote the book and maybe it is not but the fact is ,that we were told this actual clandestine Chronicle would never reach the light of day, how it did escapes me.
I know his name and it isn’t Travis James, I know it happened not in Canada and I know we patched up a knife hole at his lower spine One night as he went back to work like he had had a splinter. Maybe because of location change, name change, aircraft change and passage of time it found its way to words. Here’s my thoughts after reading the book and listening to the audio version.
I think the Tailors own private Gehenna needed to be put into words, in my experience because then your mind can sanitize and square the events as you relive it. Any of us that sought help were told in order to release the anxiety we needed to relive and face the event word for word, that’s it in a shoebox. Could he have left some details out? For some yes. For me No!! We had asked for more details Wayback when but the response was always “well I just couldn’t say “ aargh! I feel some closure after 30 years of wondering, and just a trivia tidbit for the readers as I do remember the gunshot wound on his left top forearm as described in the book, so no hole in the forearm no Tailor, Period.
I am not criticizing Miss V’s review in any way mind you. However, someone like say a Harvard grad type looking for a quick untrue constant Apex in a book might look at it quite differently than someone like me, a retired introvert reading a true but painful book. Should he have narrated the book himself? Heck yeah, because he had an unmistakable Brawny voice and he lived it, maybe giving it a different emphasis. I did like the way the audio was spruced up with a woman’s voice also.
Notice I didn’t give a review? That being because I am going to rate it for myself and some books are therapeutic and if you were ever in his or his family shoes? It would suck.
One other note though, I did Read reviews for the book and they were good but the audio version felt different than the book, nothing wrong with the audio version I just wish it was in the “Tailors” own voice. I note that we tend to read faster to ourselves than we do listening to an audiobook, I read the book in five hours but the audio version is 11 hours. With that thought in mind I couldn’t reconcile all good reviews on the book itself and one bad on the audio version, so that is why I put in my two pennies.
I hope he reads this commentary and reaches out to me.

Extremely drawn out

Extremely drawn out and redundant. Overdramatic. The story honestly could have been half as long. So many parts of the story kept getting repeated over and over. Difficult to stay engaged.