Anne Perdue
Blending real and imagined histories, Chasing the Black Eagle is a sprawling, seductive novel of intrigue, adventure, and secrecy. Geddes is a first-rate storyteller who has created a dazzling cast of schemers and dreamers whose failures and triumphs are a comic and touching testament to the mystery of personal ambition and identity.
author of Bleeding Light Rob Benvie
Geddes dives headlong into history with elegance, authority, and passion, offering a sweeping view of the 20th century in all its topsy-turviness while remaining firmly rooted in intimate human experience. Engrossing, impressive, and a ripping good yarn.
author of Nothing Looks Familiar Shawn Syms
An action adventure, a love story and a hard-boiled noir thriller all rolled up into one. Meticulously researched and artfully paced, Chasing the Black Eagle is a fascinating glimpse into a bygone era, introducing the reader to a captivating and complex cultural figure, Black aviator Hubert Julian. Masterfully adept at metaphor and possessing an incisive eye for descriptive detail, Geddes skillfully transports the reader to another time and place brought vividly to life.
author of I Am Because We Are Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr
From Port of Spain to Harlem, to Addis Ababa, Chasing the Black Eagle takes us on an intimate journey, spanning decades and exploring intertwined lives. Bruce Geddes is a master storyteller with an incredible ability to take us to dizzying heights, be it on the wings of the Black Eagle taking flight or to harrowing truths found in the underbelly of racism, anti-colonial fights, betrayal, including the worst of all, when one goes against themselves. A thoroughly enjoyable encounter of friendship, survival and above all, the human spirit.
author of Goya’s Dog Damian Tarnopolsky
Bruce Geddes is a brilliant storyteller, and Chasing The Black Eagle is an absorbing historical adventure, featuring huge characters, bracing thrills, and captivating deceptions. International in range, and epic in scale, this is a fast-moving, atmospheric novel and, at the same time, the moving story of a young man’s extraordinary passage to adulthood. You don’t want to miss the journey; you won’t ever forget the book.
author of Lean Out Tara Henley
A dazzling novel about a complicated, charismatic historical figure, the celebrity pilot Hubert Julian. Opening in the 1920s, Chasing the Black Eagle takes readers on a daring adventure from the skies of Harlem to the palaces of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, tangling with emperors, secret agents, communists, intrepid reporters, and mysterious love interests. An evocative tale, masterfully crafted, told in a singular literary voice that readers will no doubt be hearing more from.
author of Cosmo Spencer Gordon
Chasing the Black Eagle is a novel that juggles genres — spy, noir, coming-of-age, romance — with charm, wit and seemingly effortless grace. Neither self-serious nor sentimental, it's absolutely charged with lived-in authenticity for a little-known slice of 20th-century history. Don't let this one fly away: Geddes is a writer who makes history, invented or otherwise, feel as fresh as this morning, this very minute.
author of the John Cardinal series Giles Blunt
Takes an obscure corner of aviation history and spins a picaresque yarn about a couple of unlikely characters, at least one of whom happens to be real. Pilot Hubert Julian is brave and boastful and possibly nuts, with a questionable commitment to the truth—in short, a brutal assignment for the FBI informant forced to follow him, but for the reader, sparkling company indeed.
author of Small Claims Andrew Kaufman
Geddes has produced a rare feat: the literary page-turner.
author of Going Home Again Dennis Bock
A novel about bootlegging, blackmail, and the struggles of love, Chasing the Black Eagle is a wide-ranging and compulsive read full of wonderful characters.
