"Call me Linda." Even if you've never read MOBY-DICK, you'll probably recognize the allusion with which Kate Folk opens her debut novel.

Just like the white whale in Herman Melville's story, Linda has an obsession. But in her case, the objects of her fascination and desire are planes. Well, one plane in particular --- a 737-800 with the tail number N92823 --- which Linda was riding with her family to Chicago when, during a bout of severe turbulence, she experienced her first orgasm at the age of 13. "N92823 had been in operation for only two years at that point. We were both adolescents, and I hoped our flight had been as formative for him as it was for me."

"Readers might try to psychoanalyze Linda to try to get to the bottom of her singular fixation. Ultimately, however, that kind of analysis is less interesting than just meeting Linda on her own terms and following her on a tragicomic journey toward her fate."

Ever since, Linda has tried to recreate that feeling, saving up all her disposable income for airline travel (she doesn't really care about the destination, just the flight), given that her greatest wish is to be "married" to a plane --- "what others vulgarly refer to as a 'plane crash.' I believed this was my destiny: for a plane to recognize me as his soulmate midflight and, overcome with passion, relinquish his grip on the sky, hurtling us to earth in a carnage that would meld our souls for eternity." When Linda can't afford to fly, she takes the subway to the airport, sits in a bar, and watches the planes take off and land. N92823 has been retired since that fateful day more than a decade-and-a-half earlier, but that doesn't stop her from continuing to look for him.

So when Karina, Linda's coworker at a mindless, soulless content moderation company (Linda works in Hate and Harassment, Karina in Violence), invites Linda to her friends' quarterly Vision Board Brunch, Linda figures this might be a way to help bring her greatest dream to fruition. The other women --- whose vision board are full of tropical vacations, fulfilling career choices, marriage to a (human) spouse, and babies --- look a bit askance at Linda's board, populated solely with multiple photos of pilots and planes. But soon enough, some of what she included on the board starts to manifest in concrete and surprising ways.

When I first started reading SKY DADDY, I was skeptical that Folk would be able to sustain interest in this premise. What sounds like a fairly gimmicky, absurd basis for a novel goes far beyond its initial setup. Linda's first-person voice quickly grows on the reader. Unfailingly earnest, she is often naïve, if not downright clueless, about the intentions and motivations of people around her. Her oddness becomes strangely endearing, as do the side characters who --- often awkwardly and imperfectly --- try to engage Linda in more typical interests. Karina, in particular, is intriguing for her determination to befriend Linda despite her quirks and her genuine appreciation of qualities that Linda herself doesn't recognize she possesses.

Readers might try to psychoanalyze Linda to try to get to the bottom of her singular fixation. Ultimately, however, that kind of analysis is less interesting than just meeting Linda on her own terms and following her on a tragicomic journey toward her fate.