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Bach recovering after air crash

Richard Bach, author of the 1970s bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, who was seriously injured when his small plane flipped during a landing, is improving and will soon be moved out of intensive care, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Richard Bach, author of the 1970s bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, who was seriously injured when his small plane flipped during a landing, is improving and will soon be moved out of intensive care, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Doctors at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center were upgrading Bach's condition to satisfactory from serious, spokeswoman Susan Gregg said. "He's improving."

Bach, 76, clipped power lines with the landing gear of his 2008 Easton Gilbert Searey on Aug. 31 while trying to land on a grass airstrip on San Juan Island in northwestern Washington state.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the story of a seagull expelled from his clan after he pushes himself to become an extraordinary flyer, was published in 1970. It topped the New York Times bestsellers list two years later and was made into a movie in 1973.