STURGIS, SOUTH DAKOTA – On an unseasonably chilly October morning in 1974, the hum of a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron was supposed to tear into the Sturgis sky. Onboard were the remains of a father and two teenage daughters-those unfortunate souls of a tragic collision of car and train in Gallup, New Mexico-along with pilots Roger Hlavka and Dewey Rathke, brothers-in-law and competent aviators. It was to act as an air hearse, but it never arrived.
It was a day when the sky remained silent. And for Jean Quaal, Roger’s wife, time had stood still.
Jean Quaal steps into a hauntingly intimate perspective with her memoir entitled, Searching: When Songbirds Ceased to Sing. It is more than just a story of disappearance; it is a chronicle of what becomes of a life after the anchor that moored it was blown away by the winds of fate.
A Story Buried in the Mountains
The disappearance of the Beechcraft immediately called into action. Rapid City Flight Service issued a Missing Aircraft Alert that began a vast air and land search that spread across six states. Civil Air Patrols, the local sheriffs, aviation authorities, and even civilian volunteers took to the skies and the roads. But harsh weather and unforgiving terrain in the Colorado Rockies chose to keep their secrets.
Weeks traversed. The search prolonged, and desperation deepened. In her early 30s, Quaal went where forbid few would dare- she actually looked for a psychic in search of even the faintest glimmer of hope.
“When logic fails, grief makes you reach beyond,” Quaal writes.
Thereafter, after a year-long silence, the presumption was that no one survived. The wreckage was located. Engine failure, confronted with bad weather, was deemed the cause. But Searching does not rest on the moment of discovery. It sustains between the loss and the confirmation in that eroding place where Not Knowing becomes slow death.
Writing from a Place of Stillness
Quaal’s prose is not flowery, nor is it extravagantly descriptive. It is precise. BlueInk Review once observed, “The author’s writing is direct without flourishing. She’s at her strongest when she describes her internal struggles.”
Indeed, Searching is written with a steady hand by the one who had learned to live with pain rather than to overcome it. In one striking passage, she described the eerie silence that engulfed the house in the days following the disappearance: “As if the wind had forgotten how to move. The air had weight. Every sound was an echo.”
Her musings are interrupted by flashbacks to courting Roger, their early married days, and building a life together in the Midwest. These reminiscences are not just nostalgic. They serve as a lifeline for the present anguish, linking it to a past filled with music, laughter, and meaning.
When Songbirds Ceased to Sing
The title is metaphorical as well as literal. Jean uses the silence of the songbirds as a mirror for her innermost desolation. Their absence, she suggests, was nature’s way of declaring that a life had been adrift.
There was never a collapse into despair, but for all its pain, there was an undercurrent of spiritual exploration that gently introduced the reader into darker passages. Quaal artfully carries these themes of faith, surrender, and acceptance in a quiet manner less about religion and more about reverence-a reverence that invites the reader to find meaning in the wreckage of her own losses.
A Life Beyond the Book
Jean Quaal came from Wasta, South Dakota, in the year 1943. After her high school graduation from Sturgis High School in 1960, she pursued college study in business and music at Black Hills State University. Quaal has reported working as a secretary, in jail matrony, as a loan counselor, home health aide, an activity director, and as a pianist. She is, in many ways, the working woman of the American heartland-resilient yet reflective.
Her interests are writing, painting, dining, crafts, dancing, and music. She maintains a personal website at www.jeanquaalarts.com for admirers of her visual arts and musings-the site is as quiet and truly sincere as her book, carved out from the lifetime of lessons she has learned through both joy and sorrow.
Finding the Story Behind the Tragedy
The editors of America Inspire Magazine first saw Jean Quaal’s story while perusing memoirs spotlighted by ReadersMagnet and independent literary venues. While whisked away by its splendor, the magnitude of her loss immediately stood out-to which she recounted it, with reserve and dignity.
In a day and age wherein grief is fashionably acted or hashtagged into oblivion, Searching is truly humane-it does not scream; it whispers, asking the listener to feel the halts between.”
What Makes This Story Universal
The events of Searching melt into the story of Jean Quaal, while the emotions rendered are universal. Everyone who has waited for a phone call, stared into the unknown, or cried for answers in the middle of the night will find something that resonates here.
There is something more American about Jean’s tale. It is grounded in place-South Dakota plains, Colorado peaks, small-town crater-lands-and built on a cultural ethic of quiet perseverance. Her voice joins the hundreds of storytellers who have rendered personal loss into public testimony.
A Memoir for the Moment
In the world of instant gratification, Jean Quaal’s book reminds us that some stories take decades to tell. That there is no healing in a straight line. That love can remain an animating force even after it is lost.
American Inspire Magazine is proud of amplifying this message. Jean Quaal is more than an author; she has become a living testimony to the capacity humans have to bear enormous grief with graceful acceptance, and to ultimately transform that grief into art, legacy, and light for others.
Discover the Book:
🔗 Searching: When Songbirds Ceased to Sing by Jean A. Quaal
Amazon: Buy here
Barnes & Noble: Buy here
ReadersMagnet Bookstore: Buy here
Website: www.jeanquaalarts.com
“Every great story sparks another. Let Jean Quaal’s story be the one that teaches us all how to keep singing, even when the skies go quiet.”
