Magnet Ass––And The Stone Cold Truck Hunters

Magnet Ass and the Stone-Cold Truck Hunters is a Vietnam war memoir about Captain Alan "Magnet Ass" Milacek, the "man who flew his plane on one wing". It is a war story. But it is also not a war story. It has everything to do with a white-hot mission over the Plain of Jars in 1970, for which 10 men earned The Mackay Trophy, one of history's most coveted aviation awards - and at the same time, it has nothing to do with any of that at all. Magnet Ass is gritty and it is holy, sometimes full of shit and shrapnel - and at other times as demure as a duck flying over a pond in the dead of winter. Flashing between 1970 Asia and present day Oklahoma, Magnet Ass is poignantly written, meticulously researched, and narratively gripping. This incredible moment in the annals of air force history becomes a story about the power of kindness, courage, and tenacity in the face of uncertainty and fear. It becomes the story of two men pondering the past and finding themselves not only in remembering, but in relationship. Magnet Ass is at once a potent war story, a lushly written memoir, and a tale of the power of the everyday impossible, which any of us can strive to achieve.