title: Natural Flights of the Human Mind: A Novel
author:  Clare Morrall 
description: Grappling with larger-than-life issues of guilt, redemption and forgiveness, Morrall showcases the kind of quirky characters and improbable plotting that made her debut, <I>Astonishing Splashes of Colour</I>, a finalist for Britain's prestigious Booker Prize. Is a 50-something hermit, Peter Straker, responsible for the deaths of 78 people a quarter-century ago, when he crashed his small plane into a moving passenger train? The coroner ruled the crash an accident, but the details are hazy in Peter's memory, part of his former life as a drunken playboy. Eaten by guilt, Peter doesn't speak except to the 78 victims, who now live in his head: "There isn't room in his mind for anyone else." For two years, he has corresponded with the passengers' families under false pretenses, fueling his own guilt and inciting the families to seek him out for revenge. When morose, embittered Imogen Doody, a 40-ish school caretaker and writer, inherits a dilapidated cottage near the decommissioned lighthouse where Peter lives, Peter begins a tentative engagement with the world of the living, pursuing an unlikely relationship with her. Morrall is a deft guide through the landscape of grief, but her artistic prose can distance readers from her characters. <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  ALSO BY STEPHENIE MEYER
  
  
  _Twilight_
  
  
  _New Moon_
  
  
  _Eclipse_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [ABOUT THE AUTHOR](Host_toc.html#auth_bio_1)
  
  
  STEPHENIE MEYER graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in
  English literature. She lives with her husband and three sons in Arizona. Read
  more about Stephenie and her other books at
  [www.stepheniemeyer.com](http://www.stepheniemeyer.com).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER 1](Host_toc.html#chap_1)
  
  
  _Remembered_
  
  
  Iknew it would begin with the end, and the end would look like death to these
  eyes. I had been warned.
  
  
  Not _these_ eyes. _My_ eyes. Mine. This was _me_ now.
  
  
  The language I found myself using was odd, but it made sense. Choppy, boxy,
  blind, and linear. Impossibly crippled in comparison to many I’d used, yet
  still it managed to find fluidity and expression. Sometimes beauty. My
  language now. My native tongue.
  
  
  With the truest instinct of my kind, I’d bound myself securely into the body’s
  center of thought, twined myself inescapably into its every bre