O’Brien’s book deserves favorable comparison to Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book The Right Stuff. Like Wolfe, who told the story of the Mercury Seven astronauts, O’Brien focuses on the few to tell the story of the many. Also like Wolfe, he pulls his narrative threads from their disparate beginnings—the dusty plains of Wichita, the wealthy enclave of Rye, N.Y., the streets of Boston—and draws them together to lend his story a sense of inevitability if not destiny. And his breathless account of the Bendix race is as dramatic as Wolfe’s description of John Glenn orbiting the Earth three times in 1962. But most importantly, he brings his characters to life ... These are, O’Brien shows, not dusty heroes for history books, but living people whose spirit of competition and friendship broke barriers and helped build an industry. But while the women in Wolfe’s book wait anxiously on Earth, in O’Brien’s they take to the sky. Their story deserves to be told, and O’Brien does it exceptionally well.
These are women few of us have heard of before, with the exception of Amelia Earhart, whose saga shines so brightly that it nearly blinds us to all other pioneering female pilots ... For women whose achievements were discounted based on their sex, the frequency of skin-deep descriptions feels jarring, and occasionally makes it difficult to keep track of the characters. These superficialities nonetheless give way to vibrant accounts of airplane racing, with the women speeding around the country, crossing oceans, making fantastic turns around hazardous pylons and flying so high into the air that they carry oxygen tanks beside them. Each struggles for opportunity—begging sponsors, borrowing planes, dealing with unscrupulous organizers, and taking risks equal to those of their male colleagues—but with fewer rewards to tempt them. O’Brien’s prose reverberates with fiery crashes, then stings with the tragedy of lives lost in the cockpit and sometimes, equally heartbreakingly, on the ground.
If Fly Girls has a weakness, it’s in its delivery. O’Brien’s intent is clearly to give context, but it needed paring down. New characters, disorientingly, appear throughout. I regularly found myself scrolling back, looking for something that would tip me off as to why I was immersed in pages of long descriptive passages about someone or something…a male pilot, a plane manufacturer, a men’s race…as crashes, competitions, and mechanical failures began to merge together. And, call me squeamish, but I didn’t need to know all the particulars about how the bodies of downed pilots were crushed in the cockpits ... Even so, much of O’Brien’s reportage is valuable, as is his analysis of the bias the pilots faced ... The slice of history Fly Girls covers, even as it could seem like ancient history, is apt to reflect on now, given its relevance to the pattern of how American women’s bodies have historically been 'grounded'—as a way to understand the moment we are in, and, one hopes, find a way out of it.
Meet Louise Thaden, a married mother of two; Ruth Elder, a beautiful Alabama divorcée; Ruth Nichols, a woman unhappily born into wealth; and Florence Klingensmith, whose promising aviation career ended in tragedy. True resisters, they were empowered by their recently gained right to vote and inspired by aviation’s rising popularity. Charles Lindbergh’s recent solo trans-Atlantic flight in 1927 was an achievement that begged for a female challenger, and it had one soon enough ... The women of aviation were 'friendly enemies,' competing for speed and distance records while supporting each other on the ground and in the air. Known collectively as the Ninety Nines, they encouraged young women to aim high. As Earhart said, a woman’s place 'is wherever her individual aptitude places her.'
They took off in wooden crates loaded with gasoline. They flew over mountains, deserts and seas without radar or even radios. When they came down, their landings might be their last. For pilots of the 1920s and ’30s, the challenges were enormous. Multiply that exponentially for women. Author Keith O’Brien recounts the early years of aviation through a generation of female pilots who carved out a place for themselves and their sisterhood. Despite the sensation they created, each 'went missing in her own way.' ... The story builds to a thrilling climax with the 1936 Bendix race, a cross-country contest that featured Earhart and Thaden and the men heavily favored to beat them. O’Brien’s rich details put the reader in the cockpit as pilots confront equipment failures, crash landings and the frenzy of the finish line Fly Girls winningly revives that contradictory decade of high flight and deepening Depression, when female pilots had to balance their intense rivalry with their need for friends.
Air races captivated the nation during the golden age of aviation in the 1920s and 1930s, and few participants drew more attention than the female pilots who challenged the male-dominated field. O’Brien focuses on five of those women: Ruth Elder, Ruth Nichols, Louise Thaden, Florence Klingensmith, and, of course, Amelia Earhart ... Drawing heavily from contemporaneous news reports, the author documents their achievements and setbacks as well as their sometimes complicated romantic relationships ... Although Earhart’s story has been recounted numerous times, the addition of the other female pilots makes for a more thorough and enjoyable read that should appeal to readers interested in history, aviation, and women’s achievements.
Drawing on abundant sources, including letters, published and unpublished memoirs, newspaper reports, and archival material from more than a dozen museums and historical collections, O’Brien has fashioned a brisk, spirited history of early aviation focused on 5 irrepressible women ... In 1928, when women managed to get jobs in other male dominated fields, fewer than 12 had a pilot’s license, and those ambitious for prizes and recognition faced entrenched sexism from the men who ran air races, backed fliers, and financed the purchase of planes ... Fliers regularly emerged from their planes covered in dust and grease. Crashes were common, with planes bursting into flames; but risking injury and even death failed to dampen the women’s passion to fly ... A vivid, suspenseful story of women determined to defy gravity—and men—to fulfill their lofty dreams.
Journalist O’Brien tells the exciting story of aviators who, though they did not break the aviation industry’s glass ceiling, put a large crack in it ... They fought against rudimentary technology, severe weather, and undermining men to accomplish their goals. Primary among their many antagonists in this account is Cliff Henderson, millionaire promoter and organizer of the national air races, who first manipulates women to promote his sport and then has them banned from competing in it. The women’s victorious fight against his ban opens the door to even greater success and recognition as equals to men in the air. This fast-paced, meticulously researched history will appeal to a wide audience both as an entertaining tale of bravery and as an insightful look at early aviation.
