Gone for good
By: Mark Childress.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 369
Subjects: Rock musicians -- Fiction.; Fathers and sons -- Fiction.; Missing persons -- Fiction.; Air pilots -- Fiction.
Description: In his fifth novel, the author gives us the wild, comic, and ultimately moving odyssey of a 1970s folk-rock star, Ben "Superman" Willis.

Superman has been riding a wave of success in the years since the Beatles broke up and rock and roll wore itself out. But stardom is not what he thought it would be: the only time he's truly happy is when he's up in his plane, flying alone to the next concert, his son Ben Junior stashed at home in L.A., and his wife Alexa - a former Miss Southwest Louisiana - following along in a bus down below.

One night, after a show in El Paso, he flies head-on into the adventure of his life. A fierce thunderstorm, an emergency landing in Mexico, and some mind-blowing dope send him thousands of miles off course to a perilous crash landing on a beautiful, mysterious tropical island - a vision of Paradise, and, on the beach, a remarkable female apparition.

Back home, Alexa and Ben Junior are stunned by the news of Superman's disappearance. The out-of-this-world memorial concert at the Hollywood Bowl is no more than a brief distraction from the cataclysmic changes that occur when a man vanishes from the face of the earth. What they don't know, and what Superman will learn only slowly, is that he's very much alive, trapped against his will in a place where famous people go to disappear.