Lynne Kaufman Taking Flight

Taking Flight

Lynne Kaufman

Mira, Dec 2005, $12.95

ISBN: 0778321886

Even though she has been married twenty years with two children (teenage Davey and preadolescent Wendy), Los Angeles Community College Professor Julia Benson feels as if her life can fit inside a packed sardine can. She is unsure whether she loves her husband Mark, or ever did, while her dying mother residing in a Bronx slum, tells her to live life to the fullest. Julia hopes the two-week trip to Greece in which she, another professor Micahel, and the office assistant Sabrina will chaperone thirty female sophomores, will lead to some healthy flirting.

The trip proves a bust, as Michael spends his time with Sabrina and the natives flirt with the students. Depressed on the way home, she meets Ted, an oceanic archaeologist with his head in the clouds dreaming of finding Atlantis. As they hit it off, Julia wonders if she should run away to help Ted find his dream, or be responsible to a spouse and two kids who cherish her.

Readers will appreciate the gender bending middle age crisis, as Julia has her second identity issue after having obtained a new role when she returned to school to obtain a Masters and a teaching job, so that she could be a professor not just a wife and mother. That proved not fulfilling enough, making fans wonder whether the delightful protagonist will take flight with Ted or return to her adoring family. This character driven tale entices the audience because no one is nasty or abusive driving Julia away; to the contrary her family love her. Lynne Kaufman provides a fabulous tale of a woman on the crossroads taking stock of where her life is going, while readers and her will wonder who she chooses.

Harriet Klausner