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I live to talk about it,
to relate the tale as it happens,
not only its extremities and cruelty,
but also the goodness that flourishes too.

Seasoned journalist Tom Flynn shares his experiences on that "forever September morning" from his perspective as a journalist and neutral observer who stands apart from the event, but also as a participant, a survivor, and now a defining chronicler of the morning that changed our nation forever -- September 11, 2001.
What began with a bicycle ride to the World Trade Center to cover the first tower's attack, continued as the tower fell and Flynn found himself both bearing witness to, and with a disquieting view, participating in, the very event his well-trained journalistic senses intended to record and report. From those whose deaths revealed the most private moments of their lives, to those who helped guide the way to safety like the medic Avi who called him Bikeman, Flynn writes of the fellowship he felt toward others who shared his experience.

In Bikeman, you will experience the battle against the blackness of a "boiling brimstone avalanche" of chaos, silence, life, death, heat, ash, and the rising and falling of the gray-colored unknown. "We did not live through it, we just did not die," Flynn writes. What sets his story apart from other 9/11 accounts is his visceral interpretation of the event through a journalist's eye and a poet's pen. He has composed a historical ballad that is part quest, part memoir, part eulogy, and part survivor's lament, conveying the events of that morning in harrowing, unforgettable detail.

I live to talk about it,
to relate the tale as it happens,
not only its extremities and cruelty,
but also the goodness that flourishes too.

Seasoned journalist Tom Flynn shares his experiences on that "forever September morning" from his perspective as a journalist and neutral observer who stands apart from the event, but also as a participant, a survivor, and now a defining chronicler of the morning that changed our nation forever -- September 11, 2001.
What began with a bicycle ride to the World Trade Center to cover the first tower's attack, continued as the tower fell and Flynn found himself both bearing witness to, and with a disquieting view, participating in, the very event his well-trained journalistic senses intended to record and report. From those whose deaths revealed the most private moments of their lives, to those who helped guide the way to safety like the medic Avi who called him Bikeman, Flynn writes of the fellowship he felt toward others who...

In the format of an epic narrative poem, BIKEMAN recounts Flynn's terrifying experiences on the morning of 9/11. Flynn's bike ride to the World Trade Center to cover the attack is told magnificently in this historical ballad, which is part quest story, part memoir, part eulogy, and part survivor's lament. Jim Dale's quiet narration conveys the deep shock and chaos surrounding the horrors of that day. By describing the disaster in poetry, Flynn infuses the details with a poignancy that straightforward media accounts were denied. Dale lends this somber work the perfect tone. His powerful reading flows with the rich rhythms of poetic meter, without detracting from the story's epic quality. His voice rasps with horror and fear, while striving to a supreme effort at calm. A.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

 

Tom Flynn is an award-winning television producer and writer. He explains that the style of this book formed as he re-read Dante's Inferno and began to realize how "the parallel worlds of his journey to hell and mine ran together." He and his family divide their time between New York City and Cape Cod.