This is the story of the life and death of Lt. Col. Avi Lanir (1940-1974) -- the most senior Israeli pilot to fall into Syrian captivity during the Yom Kippur War, and the only one who did not return alive.

Lanir died after brutal torture, without betraying the critical secret the Israeli Air Force had entrusted to his care. The body was defeated, yet the human spirit soared and triumphed. In these stormy and turbulent times, here is the story of a man whose brief spring touched the seasons of a nascent Israel.

Israeli author and editor Yael Yannay has woven a moving, inspiring biographical tapestry from the memories of family members, soul mates, and comrades-in-arms, and from the reflections of those who led Israel then -- in body and in spirit. A profound, complex story: one of beauty and a vibrant life attuned to awareness -- full of orders and briefings; question marks and family; love and yearning; wounds and hopes.

"The central dialogue of my life is with my father. All my life I've worked to preserve that memory -- clinging to prewar fragments. The two of us in the bathtub... Jets taking off... Father-son outings... fleeting conversations... flying together.
Since then, to this very day, I've been searching for him. The memory. The touch."

-- Noam Lanir

"I couldn't put the book down -- not for a moment, not all night -- until I turned the last page. You have written a story so true -- touching raw, painful nerves -- yet casting Avi and the entire family in a deeply human light, free of artifice, free of hindsight's cleverness, free of clichés.
Today -- forty-five years after my service, fifty years after Avi fell -- it stirs in me so many familiar feelings and sharpens so many memories... "

-- Major General (Res.) Amos Yadlin

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• Biographies & MemoirsHistoricalMilitary & WarsBranchesAir Force

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• Print Length: 293 Pages
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