Tom Clavin’s ‘Lightning Down’ celebrates resilience

“Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival” by Tom Clavin (St. Martin’s Press)

American fighter pilot Joe Moser was shot down over France and captured by Germany in August 1944. The P-38 Lightning was the U.S.-made fighter plane Moser was piloting when he went down.

But don’t worry — you don’t need to know technical jargon or even care about aircraft to love Tom Clavin’s “Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival.” Though, if you are interested in the specs, rest assured Clavin scratches that itch.

“Lightning Down” is a historical biography that contains the information of a textbook while reading like a novel. The footnotes are often as interesting and wellwritten as the story itself. Given the quality of research and readability, it’s no surprise that Clavin has over a dozen such books under his belt along with a lengthy career in journalism. He knows that people are what make a story interesting and capitalizes on it. That and cliffhangers, which precede whitespace throughout the book.

Although the bulk of the biography is of Moser’s years as an Army Air Corps pilot, Clavin covers the entirety of his life. The book continues after his return home to show how his story was silenced due to peoples’ disbelief of his experiences. It reveals how he coped with concentration camp memories and adjusted to being a typical American family man and worker.

And, despite the horrors that Moser experienced and Clavin describes vividly, “Lightning Down” has an overarching positivity and celebration of resilience.