Author with book, receipts and passport.

Ohio’s Wittenberg University professor Dan Fleisch, author of A Student’s Guide to Maxwell’s Equation, made a surprise delivery of his book to Ottawa, Canada, resident Michel Cuhaci after reading on Amazon.com that Cuhaci had received a flawed copy, the Dayton Daily News reported.

Fleisch posted a response to Cuhaci on Amazon, saying that he would try to get a copy to him overnight. But, as the Daily News reports, “The only problem was, it was Christmas Eve.” After looking into several methods to get the book into his hands, to no avail, Fleisch said, “I was pretty much resigned I can’t get it to him. I felt pretty lousy.” But then he found himself “sitting in a plane at the Dayton airport waiting to head north. ‘I’m sitting there. The plane is fairly empty, and I think, ‘Am I nuts?'”

After landing in Ottawa and renting a car at the airport, Fleisch found Cuhaci’s house and rang the bell. “I opened the door and there’s this guy in front of me saying, ‘Which book would you like, hardcover or soft?’ ” Cuhaci recalled. “I was trying to understand what was happening. Said Fleisch, “He was clearly an intelligent man, but you could just watch the wheels turning in his head.”

No good deed goes unpunished, however. Fleisch returned to the aiirport to find that bad weather was causing backups and cancelled flights. He wound up driving the rental car all the way home, turning what would have been a 90 minute flight into an 11 hour ordeal. Still, he tells the Daily News, “Just seeing the look on his face … it was worth it.”