Parisian Phoenix Publishing

Please enjoy this sneak peak excerpt from Any Landing You Walk Away From… the debut historical fiction novel from Dawn O’Harra. In this novel, she fictionalizes her career as a flight attending during the 1980s when the airline industry was deregulated. The novel will release August 28.

In this excerpt, we find May, our main character, interviewing for her dream job— as a flight attendant.

“Well, no matter, let’s get on with your language test shall we? So you speak Spanish then?” Roger, the interviewer, asked.

May sat dumb-struck as he rattled off incomprehensible questions at her with a Castilian accent.

Think of something, think of anything! her mind screamed as she tried to hide the overwhelming terror welling inside her. What little Spanish she did remember drained from her consciousness.

“Es.., Es…. Espanol es una lengua muy bonita and ah…., ah… ah…”

Roger waited expectantly.

“Eh, hem…Well, Espanol es ah… ah huh ah……”

A Spanish phrase suddenly popped into her mind. Thrilled to remember anything, she blurted it out.

“Ah, mi culo es mucho grande.” Her voice cracked. It was hopeless. “Mi Espanol es muy terrible.”

Roger said nothing for a bit, then moved up in his chair.

“Yes, I will agree with your assessment of your Spanish since you just told me that your rear end is very large.”

May’s face went absolutely crimson.

“You know we do require that you be fluent in a foreign language,” Roger said.

Trying to recover the remains of her dignity, she stammered, “But… but… I was told that the language requirement wasn’t that important if I fulfilled the other requirements. I… I made sure I asked before I came to the first interview.”

She was rattling on in desperation now. Roger stood.

“Why don’t you take a nice language course and come back and see us in six months?”

With a sympathetic smile, he graciously showed May the door and closed it behind her. She found herself standing alone in the terminal. It had taken all of five minutes. She was crushed, bewildered, humiliated.

As she wandered out of the terminal, she tried to make sense of what had just happened. She was angry. Angry because she felt that she’d been misled, but also ashamed of the fact that after three years of high school Spanish and another class in college, the only comment she could come up with was about the size of her rear end.

May got into her old Buick and started the long drive home, the tears of disappointment beginning to flow. How could she go home and face her family members and all of their questions? What would she tell Jake?

She found herself pulling into his lake house. It was dinner time, and he’d built a nice fire on the shore near the water. He sat on a log twirling a hotdog on the end of a long stick over the fire, the juices running out of it and sizzling as they hit the flames. He looked up.

“Hey! I wasn’t expecting you! How did it go? You want a hot dog?” He gazed into her tear-stained face. “Uh oh, what happened?”

May poured out the story, going over and over the events.

“Let me get this straight,” Jake said. “You told your prospective employer you have a big ass in Spanish?”

He couldn’t control himself and burst out laughing. May shot him a baleful look.

“Okay, I’m sorry, but that is really funny and not true by the way. Your ass is just fine. Come on, it’s not the end of the world,” Jake tried to console her. “Give it time, something else is bound to turn up.”

“Like what? I’ve been looking for so long and this was my only nibble. I’m so tired of hanging around, I just have to get out and see things!”