BookBrowse Reviews Sky Daddy by Kate Folk

BookBrowse:

A clever examination of sexuality and destiny revolving around a woman who is attracted to airplanes.

Linda, the protagonist of Kate Folk's debut novel Sky Daddy, is sexually and romantically attracted to commercial airplanes. Linda is a first-person narrator, and this information about her interests is relayed to the reader with little fanfare. It is a plain fact of her existence, like the fact that she is 29 years old or that she has a strained relationship with her mother. She understands that it sets her apart from other people, but she is generally accepting of herself and her identity and the author never holds her up for ridicule.

This is not to say that it's not an important fact of her existence — Linda's life revolves around planes. She works for $20/hour at Acuity, a video streaming platform, moderating the comment section (and training AI technology to ultimately take her job) so that she can afford a short commercial flight once a month. The frequent flying is not (only) for sexual gratification; it is necessary for Linda to fulfill what she believes to be her destiny — getting "married" by dying in a plane crash. This destiny was etched in stone for Linda when she was 13 and took a flight with her family to Chicago aboard a plane with the tail number N92823. The flight experienced an intense bout of turbulence that Linda believes represented the plane recognizing her "as his soulmate." She tracked N92823's comings and goings for years after, before discovering that he had been taken out of commission, presumably stripped for parts.

More recently, Linda has developed a friendship, her first, with Karina, a colleague at Acuity. Karina invites Linda to the "quarterly" Vision Board Brunch (VBB), a ritual she takes part in with her other girlfriends, explaining to her that "vision boards, crafted from common drugstore materials, could be used to manifest anything a person wanted in life." Linda, of course, would like very much to manifest a plane crash, but she manages to only imply this with her vision board so as to not risk social rejection. This first VBB seals her friendship with Karina, and they grow closer in the weeks and months that follow. But it also cements her commitment to achieving her destiny.

Simultaneously, Linda develops a friendship (of sorts) with one of the higher-ups at Acuity, a sad, self-centered, recently divorced man named Dave. When she convinces him to take a flight with her and they have a sexual encounter on the plane, Linda believes she is taking advantage of him, despite the power differential in their jobs. She ultimately manages to manipulate this situation into a hefty payday for herself which coincides with her discovery that her long lost love from adolescence, N92823, has been put back into service, and she becomes obsessed with facilitating a (violent, fiery) reunion with her soul mate.

The book is very pithy and often downright funny. When Linda decides to break things off with Dave, believing that he is growing too attached to her, she declares to herself, "I could not be a man's girlfriend if I hoped to be a plane's wife." There is also a quiet, simmering suspense as Linda pursues her destiny — her death — with rigorous determination.

Linda's sexuality is obviously the novel's hook, and it is very interesting to learn about what it means to her and how she sees herself and her potential partner(s). She does not identify with objectum sexuality (an attraction to objects, see Beyond the Book) because "Planes were not static objects, but sentient beings with rich inner lives." Who are any of us to say she's wrong? But tragically, Linda also feels shame, thinking of herself as a "pervert," a brand of self-loathing that will be familiar to many whose sexuality does not align with cisheteronormativity.

Perhaps more than anything else, Sky Daddy is about the power of friendship to transform a person's life, particularly when that person believes themselves to be an outcast. Prior to Karina, Linda has never really been close to anyone other than her father, who shared her interest in planes (albeit for different reasons). She is surprised when Karina continues to show interest in her, and when she is likewise accepted by Karina's sweet boyfriend Anthony. She feels initially that she must hide her true self so as to not rock the boat of friendship but gradually the lies and disguises begin to fall away. She discovers, in fact, that Karina might be an integral part of her destiny.

Life is almost always more difficult for people who do not fit into society's molds. Linda explains that she has always feared others finding out about her attraction to planes and what she believes to be her fate:

"I knew they'd be horrified and shun me. I'd tiptoed through life, keeping myself under tight restraint, afraid that an excess of feeling would cause me to reveal too much, ushering in my social demise. Though my isolation sometimes weighed on me, I reasoned that my bond with planes more than compensated for my disconnection from people."

It's not that Linda's fears turn out to be entirely unfounded, but that they were an oversimplification, not taking into account the vastness of the world and the diversity of people in it. The blossoming of the friendship between Linda and Karina provides an emotional center and enhances the book's propulsive narrative power. Sky Daddy demonstrates, winningly, that "there's a lid for every pot" doesn't only apply to romantic relationships. It's a surprisingly sweet and unsurprisingly psychologically rich novel that will change the way you look at the "fine gentlemen" in the sky.

This review will run in the April 9, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.