Author Keith O’Brien’s book, Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds And Made Aviation History, covers the growth of aviation in the 1920s and ‘30s and the contributions of women who flew during that time. It’s about gender bias and history, racing competition, public relations and determination. Despite the title, this book is about more than just five women. In fact, it is about more than just women. It is about an entire industry.
To be
blunt, this is just a heck of a book. A great read, published in 2018 by
Houghton Mifflin. O’Brien is a former newspaper reporter and has been a
contributor to National Public Radio.
The
best-known female pilot from the 20s and 30s was Amelia Earhart. Her role in
the growth of aviation and in the women’s movement in general is covered in
this fine book. However, O’Brien makes it clear from the start that his book is
about all of the women pilots of the time: Louise Thaden, Ruth Nichols,
Florence Klingensmith, Blanche Noyes and lots of others. (Among those fliers chronicled
in this telling is an Alabama-born woman named Ruth Elder. Elder is not a
relative of my family, so far as can be determined.) All of the pilots
mentioned struggled to be allowed to compete in the air races of the day. They
were barred for years; the races were male-only events. Eventually, Thaden
skunked everyone when she won a major cross-country race to Los Angeles and the
boys had to wake up to a sobering fact: Women made good fliers.
O’Brien
is a deft storyteller and his research is outstanding. The writing flows at a
very enjoyable pace. The story and O’Brien’s smooth writing pulls you right
along. The only complaint here is the book follows its path without footnotes.
If the reader wonders about a specific passage, there are notes in the back of
the book, arranged by page number. This reviewer prefers the old school style
with footnotes at the bottom of the page.
Structurally,
Fly Girls is composed of an introduction and 22 chapters. There are 35
images in the middle of the book. The Acknowledgments section in the back of
the book is absolutely important to read. This reviewer values high-quality
research, always reading this section of non-fiction books. The passage about
O’Brien’s conversations with Thaden’s daughter tells the reader about the
impact doing the research had on him. For this reader, it was the perfect
ending.
The
story of women fighting for their place in the growth of aviation has direct
application to today’s world. Even today, roughly a century after the point
where Fly Girls begins, women continue to fight for equality. Look no
further than the field of sports, generally, and automobile racing in
particular. Women are winning championships in drag racing but they struggle to
get major sponsorships or a chance to drive the best equipment in other forms
of the sport. Some female racers reach stardom, like Earhart did, but others
demonstrate great talent without getting the same recognition.
This is
a book worth reading. It is about history. It is about airplanes. Most of all,
it is about people. What’s more important than that?
