When a storyteller scents a good story — even if the first hint takes the form of a single, throwaway sentence — an adventure begins. So it was for Bill Riddle of Kane'ohe, who heard one day that the proper name of the Honolulu International Airport used to be John Rodgers Airport; that, in fact, the main terminal is still officially designated the John Rodgers Terminal, and that there's a street named for Rodgers by the airport, too.

But who was John Rodgers, he wondered.

Riddle's new fact-based novel, "Dead Downwind: Ten Harrowing Days that Changed Aviation History" (Compass Rose/self-published, hardback, $26.50) answers that question and reopens one of those "who-woulda-thunk-it?" moments in Island history that excite history buffs and make great game show clues.

"Yes, Bob, I'll take aviator who first attempted to fly between San Francisco and Honolulu for 10 points. Who is Cmdr. John Rodgers and his crew who, after running out of fuel 300 miles from Hawai'i in 1925, sent a nation into mourning only to turn up off the coast of Kaua'i, having converted their boat plane to a sail-and-row boat and surviving every form of SNAFU the Navy could devise?"

The book's title is one of its smartest features, summarizing the factor that led both to the crew's troubles and their eventual triumph: trade winds. "Dead downwind" is an aviation term that refers to winds that blow directly from behind an aircraft, aiding its progress when they're present, creating excess fuel demands when they're not.

The Rodgers affair was one of those blips on the EKG of life that seem like double figures on the Richter scale when they are occurring. Case in point: When the news broke of the crew's rescue, on Sept. 10, 1925, this newspaper issued an early-afternoon special edition with a three-word, all-caps headline that took up half a page: "RODGERS IS FOUND!"

Behind this story of real-life heroism, tenacity and determination are other stories.

There is a political drama that is probably the reason that the Navy still has an air arm today. There was a move afoot in the 1920s, most notably backed by World War I aviator Gen. Billy Mitchell, to quash the services' individual air corps in favor of a single, unified air force. Mitchell, a publicity seeker, comes off as the villain of this piece.

There is another story, of a little-recalled related tragedy involving another form of air service, this one doomed and equally dramatic.

And in Riddle's imagination, there is a love story that is perhaps the least-successful part of his endeavor.

An enthusiastic sailor who once built his own ultralight airplane, Riddle, a first-time novelist, exhibits some minor faults common to early fiction writing efforts. Despite able assistance from editor Eden-Lee Murray and literary agent Roger Jellinek, Riddle, like Tom Clancy, doesn't quite succeed in making his characters live except when the they're doing what they in fact did. The local folks he conjures up are wooden and stereotyped, and the crew tends to tell each things they already know just so the readers will know the facts, too.

Riddle and a friend originally wrote the book as a movie treatment and were urged to add the fictional love story to make it more marketable, which they did. But great true-life stories -and this is one — have no need of could-have-been conceits; they stand on their own.

Setting that aside, anyone who is at all interested in aviation, military or Isle history will, as I did, gulp this book in a night's satisfying reading. And give a nod to a hero when they pass Rodgers Boulevard.