Elm Grove Publishing

From barnstormer to bush flyer to airline pilot, wartime ferry pilot and airborne firefighter, no job was too big, too small or too hazardous for William Floyd Sheldon Luck. He ferried Gold Rush miners to distant claims in the Yukon, then carried hookers to visit the miners, often in outrageous weather conditions and to locations so remote that they have never been mapped or even named. He delivered unarmed aircraft across the Atlantic in World War II and carried top secret messages across occupied France for Winston Churchill. He blazed a trail of routes over Northwest Canada and later helped establish a chain of early warning radar stations across the Arctic Circle. His amazing aviation career spanned more than fifty years, yet few today are familiar with his name. 

Sheldon Luck’s remarkable career spanned more than five decades fraught with adventure and danger (he walked away from several crashes), as well as frequent hilarity (such as the time he landed a flying boat a little too close to shore in The Bahamas, nudging a seaside house and terrifying the copulating couple inside!). Throughout his adventures – and misadventures – good luck never ran out for this “Pilot of Fortune.” 

  

Pilot of Fortune is a glorious collage of anecdotes about Sheldon’s many adventures. All the accidents and incidents, and the many characters he met along the way, beautifully chronicled by acclaimed Canadian author Ted Beaudoin. 

  

Meticulously researched and compiled from hundreds of interviews with Sheldon Luck and recollections of those who knew him best – those who lived with him, worked with him and flew alongside him – Pilot of Fortune is poignant, exciting and often hilarious – a must-read for anyone with an interest in aviation history and a fondness for its larger-than-life heroes.

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314 pages with b/w photographs

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ISBN 978-1-943492-17-6 (hard back)

ISBN 978-1-943492-19-0 (soft cover)