Book review: Fly Girls

 

          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?