Taking Flight

Overview

When Tito is a child, his grandmother teaches him how to weave magic around the ones you love in order to keep them close. She is the master and he is the pupil, exasperating Tito's put-upon mother who, although exhausted from working long hours, is usually the focus of their mischief. As Tito grows older and his grandmother's mind becomes less sound, their games take a dangerous turn. They both struggle with a particular spell, one that creates an illusion of illness to draw in love. But as the lines between magic and childish tales blur, so too do those between fantasy and reality. In this beautifully told drama of the bond between grandson and grandmother, J. T. Torres delicately explores the complexities of family bonds – in which love is need, and need becomes manipulation, along with the pain and difficulties of dementia and mental ill health.

Reviews

"Torres's masterful prose, and his inspired confrontation with grief and alienation, will linger in my mind for a long time." —Amy Kurzweil, author of Flying Couch: a graphic memoir

"Taking Flight stirs the heart with the revelation that when it comes to the greatest illusions in life, the real magic exists only because of love." —Don Rearden, author of The Raven's Gift

"JT Torres' story is a masterful work written in the style of magic realism that slowly peels apart the passing down of the "immigrant experience" from one generation to the next." —Jill Flanders Crosby, Professor of Theatre and Dance, University of Alaska Anchorage

"JT Torres' Taking Flight is a remarkable work about a boy who must discover his personal and cultural history." —Karen Salyer McElmurray, author of Wanting Radiance

Author Biography

Born in Miami, Florida, J. T. Torres is of Cuban-American descent. He is an assistant professor of English at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. Torres combines an MFA in creative writing with a PhD in educational psychology to understand how storytelling often frames the construction of a self. This is his debut novella.