A hard landing lasts only seconds. The account of it can follow you for years.

Vera Halse has spent three quiet years managing a small municipal airfield, far from the high-traffic control hub she left behind. Her days are measured in weather reports, runway inspections, fuel records, and the familiar movements of pilots whose habits she knows by heart.

Then veteran cargo pilot Owen Precht brings his aircraft down hard on runway two-seven.

No one is injured. The aircraft is intact. But Vera’s incident report triggers a mandatory operational review—and forces her to confront the difference between an account that is technically accurate and one that tells the whole truth.

Seven years earlier, Vera survived another review. She was cleared, but the official finding never resolved the two minutes she could not reconstruct or the uncertainty she omitted from her written account. Now, as she prepares a new statement, she must decide whether honesty requires her to reveal not only what she observed, but why she chose to document it.

Owen is carrying an unresolved account of his own. As the review unfolds, their long professional familiarity deepens into something quieter and more personal: the recognition between two people who understand what it means to be officially cleared and still unable to put the past down.

Set against the restrained rhythms of a small airfield in late autumn, Dead Reckoning is a character-driven novel about professional judgment, moral uncertainty, accountability, and the courage required to admit when certainty is no longer available.