The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky

December 12, 2005
On December 21, 1988, Dornstein's older brother, David, went down with Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Shattered, Dornstein returned to college and tried to move on. But eight years later, he started reading the papers left behind by his brother, who was an unpublished but prolific writer. He decided to travel to Lockerbie, believing "I could still save David's life if I went right away." This memoir cobbles together the author's memories, past news accounts and David's passionate journal entries and letters. It is this comprehensive blending, as well as Frontline
series editor Dornstein's clear and eloquent writing about understanding the mystery of who his brother really was—he uncovers that David had been molested as a child—that keeps this from being a sappy, self-indulgent account. Dornstein employs some clever literary devices, such as a list of things to do in Lockerbie, which includes a walk to Tundergarth, one of the wreckage sites, with "hills so lush, soft, and rolling green you will want to drop onto them yourself." Seventeen years after the bombing, Dornstein is married (to his brother's first love, incidentally), a father and at peace with the loss.