Stone Age Astronaut

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The Astonishing Adventures of America’s Forgotten Flier

Liam Callanan

A gripping portrait of ambition, innovation, fame, failure, and reinvention—and the enduring human urge to fly—that brings the extraordinary, and largely forgotten, story of Lester Maitland to light.

200 pages, 6 x 9, 20 b&w photos
Paperback: $24.95 | ISBN: 978-1-9766-0091-3
Ebook: $15.99 | ISBN: 978-1-9766-0092-0
Publication Date: 9/1/2026

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Description

In June 1927, aviator Lester Maitland made history by becoming the first person to fly to Hawaii. His achievement earned him national acclaim on par with Charles Lindbergh, whose transatlantic flight had taken place just five weeks earlier. For a brief moment, the two men shared headlines, White House invitations, and fame. But while Lindbergh’s legacy grew, Maitland’s all but vanished—until now. In Stone Age Astronaut, award-winning author Liam Callanan brings Maitland back into the spotlight, uncovering his astonishing life and accomplishments as a pilot during both peacetime and wartime, as well as his journey into near-oblivion.

Callanan traces Maitland's meteoric early career: flight instructor at nineteen; one of the US Army’s first test pilots; the first American to fly faster than 200 mph; and the pioneering airman whose Pacific crossing earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross. Just twenty-two days after becoming Executive Officer of the Far East Air Service Command—and one day after Pearl Harbor—Maitland witnessed the destruction of much of the Far East Air Force in the Philippines. Later, he commanded the 386th Bomb Group in Europe, making him World War II’s oldest bomber pilot, only to be abruptly and mysteriously retired weeks before D-Day. After the war, Maitland experienced a series of professional and personal disappointments, and he quietly faded into obscurity. He eventually became an Episcopal priest, serving small parishes far from the glamour of his early days in the cockpit.

The pages of Stone Age Astronaut hum with the tension and excitement of early aviation, rendered in a richly detailed narrative and Callanan’s research—spanning archives, newspapers, interviews, and travel to key sites—to reveal the remarkable sweep of Lester Maitland’s world. Along the way, readers encounter a constellation of notable figures: Amelia Earhart, Billy Mitchell, Ernest Hemingway, Gerald Ford, Richard Bong, the Dole Pineapple King, Harry Houdini, and even a Skull and Bones–affiliated aviation official.

With sparkling prose and a storyteller’s instinct for detail, Callanan resurrects a man whose life intersected with major events, eras, and personalities—but who has inexplicably and unjustly slipped through the cracks of American memory.

Author Bio

Liam Callanan

Liam Callanan is a writer and professor. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and he has recorded numerous essays for public radio. His novel, Paris by the Book, a national bestseller, won the Edna Ferber Prize and was translated into multiple languages. He has taught for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Liam lives with his wife and daughters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, five blocks from where Lester Maitland grew up.

An impeccably researched, crisply written history of the entire twentieth century as seen through one pilot-turned-priest’s unlikely journey. From Milwaukee into the air and then beyond, Lester Maitland lived a life of adventure, of daring, and of service. Liam Callanan’s witty and wise book lifts him back into the sky where he belongs.

Dan Kois

Author of “Facing Future” and founder of Slate Book Review

“Time’s passage can be cruel, erasing from our collective memory the lives and feats of extraordinary men and women. In this beautifully written biography, Liam Callanan recovers the fascinating story of the once-famous aviation pioneer Lester Maitland, bringing to life the daring, drama, and high adventure of early air travel—even as he reflects perceptively on the evanescence of fame and glory. You will be captivated.”

—David Greenberg, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of John Lewis: A Life

“How had I never heard of Lester Maitland? Five weeks after Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, Maitland was the first pilot to fly nonstop from California to Hawaii, an astonishing feat of nerve, discipline, and navigation. He went on to become one of the most famous pilots in America before slipping almost entirely from view. With Stone Age Astronaut, Liam Callanan has written the kind of story I love most: a deeply researched, beautifully told resurrection of a vanished American life, and a moving portrait of survival and reinvention.”

—Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made an American Icon

“How this incredible story was almost lost to history, I’ll never know. Liam Callanan brings Lester Maitland’s remarkable journey back to life through masterful storytelling, unforgettable detail, and a twist that leaves a lasting impression long after the final page.”

—Hannah Shickles, chief curator, Kelch Aviation Museum

“Brilliantly written, passionately researched, and propulsively paced, Stone Age Astronaut illuminates the wild story of Lester Maitland, a tale of adventure, audacity, heartbreak, and renewal that somehow slipped between the cracks of history. In Callanan’s capable hands, Maitland’s story becomes a profound meditation on obsession, glory, legacy, and the ways in which one’s life and actions—however seemingly forgotten—can impact ‘a remarkable litany of lives.’”

—Matthew Gavin Frank, author of Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines

Author Q&A

I like mysteries and Lester Maitland's story had a surprising number of them. At a time when flying meant premature death was not only possible but likely—between 1909, when the US Army purchased its first plane, and 1913, 75 percent of the Army’s 24 pilot-rated officers died in crashes—why did people like Maitland do it? And then, specific to his own career, after his own history-making flights in the 1920s and ’30s, why did Maitland's career sputter? What happened to him the day after Pearl Harbor in the Philippines? How did he wind up as one of WWII's oldest bomber pilots? Why was he peremptorily sent home? Why, after all his success in the air, did he so radically change his life on the ground in his fifties? And why has this pilot—who was on speaking terms with Lindbergh, Earhart, and the Wright Brothers—been so profoundly forgotten? I had to find out, and the more layers of history I peeled back, the more surprising the story got.

It was a lengthy process, in part because other projects kept jumping in front of it, but it was always simmering somewhere in my computer. Whenever I was near some place that had some connection to Maitland—California, Colorado, Arizona, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Alabama—I would duck into the local library or archives and see what I could find. Sometimes there wasn't much—sometimes there was a lot. And almost all of it surprised me. At one point, for example, I learned a pigeon helped save his life.

All my books have required a great deal of research, often in archives, so that felt very familiar. The primary difference, of course, was that this was my first nonfiction book. It's one thing to start your novel saying, "It was a dark and stormy night when he was born," and another to start a biography that way—you actually have to know what the weather was when Lester Maitland was born (clear and cold).

One, advances in aviation and exploration didn't just happen; history can make progress seem inevitable, but it actually requires an enormous amount of courage and risk, often on the part of surprisingly few. Two, no one can predict how their life will turn out, or what sort of midlife swerves lives can take. If anyone has ever wondered "what happens next?" about their own life, this book has one man's dramatic answer.

I hope readers will discover that Maitland was a hero but also, as he adamantly reminded people later in life, that he was very much a human as well. I also want people to come away with a sense of just how dangerous aviation was and what courage flying required. Whatever your plans were, whenever you took off, you could never be 100 percent certain exactly where you would land.