SOURCE: Dunlap, John R. Review of Aurora 7, by Thomas Mallon. American Spectator 24, no. 5 (May 1991): 51.

In the following review, Dunlap examines how Mallon created the narrative structure of Aurora 7 and asserts that the novel is ultimately about the power of fate.

On Thursday, May 24, 1962, at 7:45 a.m. EST, the second U.S. manned orbital space flight was undertaken when the Aurora 7 was launched from Cape Canaveral with astronaut Malcolm Scott Carpenter aboard. Although the flight made the intended three orbits within the anticipated five hours, Carpenter flubbed his retrofire maneuver during re-entry and overshot the expected landing position by nearly 300 miles. For about an hour, sixty-five million television viewers were held in suspense, until Walter Cronkite announced that Scott Carpenter had been located bobbing on a life raft beside his floating spacecraft northeast of the Virgin Islands. Carpenter, safe and in good health, was picked up by a helicopter...