Colleen Mondor learned to fly at age eighteen and has degrees in aviation, history and northern studies. Her book, The Map of My Dead Pilots, is based on her experiences as lead dispatcher at a Part 135 (commercial) air carrier based in Fairbanks. "The 'Company' had bases in multiple bush locations and flew single-engine, multi-engine and twin turbine aircraft carrying everything from scheduled passengers and mail to convicts and sled dogs. There were incidents and accidents, moments of Pythonesque absurdity and brain-numbing hard work. It was never the profession I learned about in the classroom nor the glory stories so popular in modern myth…It is the story of the people who worked at one Alaskan commuter and the culmination of my efforts to understand how commercial pilots live and die in the Last Frontier. “