A Review of Richard Bach's "Travels with Puff: A Gentle Game of Lifeand Death"

Richard Bach is a writer who is serious about his privacy, but he is also a man most generous in spirit and on the page. In this his latest (2013, Nice Tiger), Richard opens by saying, "Destiny brought us together for this flight, and for love of you, dear reader...." 

I felt welcomed along on this particular journey.

A Boy on Sargent Road

Friday’s rush-hour traffic has me looking for a path of least resistance. I exit the interstate in favor of side roads. Driving home toward Fishers, I turn onto Sargent Road -- a shaded route that lazes its way northeast through Marion County.

Settlers first entered the Mud Creek Valley here in 1824. The farmhouse with chipped white paint and a latticed porch still stands where Johnny Sargent's father built it in the 1880s. 

Across the road and obscured by overgrowth, a sagging barn guards the entrance to the fallow field where Johnny flew in and out with his J-3 Piper Cub in the mid-1950s.