Lana Hart
is an American-born writer who has called New Zealand home since the 1990s. Her award-winning work spans journalism, broadcasting, and scriptwriting.
Nice People on Planes is her debut novel.
Nice People on Planes is a novel about finding connections that are more than skin deep in a busy and disconnected world.
Lana Hart weaves cultural narratives with acuity, crafting a serpentine, sensitive, and surprising journey for Cora who holds the story’s heart. I was captivated by Cora’s complex character, while her search for meaning highlights the profound importance of connection to something larger than oneself.
– Dr Amanda Booth, Melbourne
Excerpts from Nice People on Planes
He turned to look at me by leaning back into the far corner of his seat, angling his shoulders towards me. His eyes held mine for a moment. As if he knew things about me he shouldn’t have known.
Further down the beach, I was relieved to find the baches return to their ramshackle appearances, with makeshift crow’s nests poking out of rooftops, windowed garages filled with messy bunks, and not-so-safe stairwells leaning against upstairs rooms for, I guessed, emergency midnight swims. Here were the New Zealand baches of my childhood.
“So, are you from Chicago?”
“Yep.”
“Love it there. My kinda town.” Another penny for the jar.
“Hmm.” I nodded slightly in agreement.
I started to reach for my earbuds. Then he said, “I’m an adolescent psychologist in Miami. Just went to a conference at McCormick Place. They sure know how to do conferences there.”
His patients are teens. It piqued my interest enough to say, “Interesting job. Lots of emo teens giving in to the self-harming craze?”
He laughed, “Some of those. But the conference was about grief. How age affects how we deal with it. It’s amazing, you know, what science is now telling us about the adolescent brain – the changes that occur in the brain due to grief can be so much more severe than the same episode in the adult brain.”
He now had my full attention. Darn it.
Lana Hart 