Push the Envelope

Finished July 27

Push the Envelope by Rochelle Paige

This new adult novel is focused on college-aged Alexa, and is the first in a series focused on her and her friends. Alexa grew up in this college town, raised by her widowed father. He is a pilot and so is Alexa, who is continuing to gain more flying credentials as well as studying business at college to prepare to grow and eventually take on her father's private plane business. She has recently come up with a new gimmick to get bookings, a "Mile High" flight service, where she has short flights that return to the same airport, allowing amorous couples to add some spice to their love life.

Alexa has had a serious boyfriend in the past, but when he cheated and started stalking her when she dumped him, she decided to take some time away from dating. Her best friend Aubrey is very much into the dating scene, not ready for a serious relationship. 

Alexa's father wanted her to more fully experience the college life, so she and Aubrey are in a dorm apartment with a couple of other girls. Aubrey's older brother, Jackson, is a great guy and played a big role protecting her when her earlier relationship became troublesome. Alexa thinks of him as a big brother, which I understood, but would have liked to develop into something else. 

Instead, Alexa is drawn to a newly transferred student in the same fraternity house as Jackson, Drake. Drake has a reputation as a smooth talker and casual dater, not what Alexa is looking for in a relationship, but her pursues her strongly, and the chemistry between them is strong. 

Despite this, I really didn't like Drake. He seldom calls Alexa by her name, calling her 'babe' a lot, which felt to me that he didn't see her as her own person. He was also very possessive and jealous, talking about her like she was property. He seemed to feel his wealth should get him whatever he wanted. The dialogue in the book felt unnatural and stilted or formulaic, and I had a hard time getting through it. 

The whole relationship felt very focused on sex and less about the people, and the characters lacked any depth. I feel there are much better reads for the in the new adult genre which depict more healthy relationships. 

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club

Finished February 12

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson

This novel was a delightful read. It takes place in the summer of 1919, and follows several young people who are adjusting to life after the war. Many of the women worked during the war, and have now found themselves without those jobs. Some are trying to survive on the small war widows pensions by augmenting it by other work. They aren't the only ones seemingly locked out of the work they had been doing. Men who were injured also find themselves treated as incapable. 

The central character here is Constance Haverhill. Constance's mother grew up with another woman who married into a titled family, while Constance's mother married a farmer. They continued to call each other best friends, but it seems like Lady Mercer treated her friend as an unpaid worker, often calling on her to help with childcare and other household endeavours. During the war, Constance worked as estate manager for the Mercers, but found herself quickly ousted when the war ended. With her mother dead from the influenza epidemic, she found herself called on to nurse Lady Mercer's mother, Mrs. Fog when she was ill. Her 'reward' is to act as companion to Mrs. Fog while she convalesces at a seaside hotel. 

But it is in this town that both Constance and Mrs. Fog encounter second chances. Constance meets another young woman her age, Poppy Wirrall. Poppy is also the daughter in a titled family, and she spent the war, along with other young women, working as motorcycle messengers. Poppy has started a small company offering motorcycle taxi (using sidecars) and delivery services, with a variety of young women employed part-time doing this work. Some have other jobs or widows pensions that they augment by working for her. 

Poppy's brother was a pilot during the war, and lost part of one leg in action. He is back at home, but depressed by the loss of many men he considered friends, and the inability of others to consider him employable. 

Constance is a calming force to Poppy's impulsiveness and exuberance, and as she begins to take chances, and open herself up to other possibilities in her life, I found myself hoping for a more promising future for her than she expected at the book's beginning. 

I also enjoyed Mrs. Fog, watching her go from recovering invalid to putting her own wishes first, despite the pressure of those she'd given into previously. 

I also found the story of the German waiter Klaus Zeiger touching. He is the quintessential waiter, always observant, mindful of propriety, and empathetic to the needs of those he serves. He is also highly aware of his ethnic baggage and how it has affected his life both during the war and now. I really appreciated that Constance saw him as a person, beyond his role. 

This is a novel of a time of great changes and adjustments and not all of them are fair or pleasant. This novel has moments of outrage, sadness, and joy. Well worth reading. 

The Women with Silver Wings

Finished December 27

The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II by Katherine Sharp Landdeck

This book drew my interest after reading about these women in both history books and fiction. (For fiction, The All Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg, for nonfiction Our Mothers' War by Emily Yellin.)

There were many women looking to do their part during the war, and pilots were a small but vocal group. This book outlines how two women pilots led the charge, but didn't always agree about how to go about it, or about what the end result should be. Those two women were Nancy Love and Jacqueline Cochran, and at first they led to different endeavours for the female pilots. Nancy Love started with a handful of women who served as ferry pilots, moving planes around the country as needed, to free up male pilots for frontline work. Her pilots had significant experience and were based with Air Transport Command in Wilmington, Delaware. 

Jacqueline Cochran was already flying in a similar capacity in Britain, leading a group of American women pilots flying for the ATA there. (A great fiction book about the female Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) pilots is The Beauty Chorus by Kate Lord Brown). When she heard about the women led by Nancy Love, she returned to the U.S. as fast as she could and argued that she was promised a lead role in women pilots flying for the war effort. She was then put in charge of recruiting other women pilots with less experience and getting them trained. She started on this immediately, and started at a Houston, Texas base, later moving to Sweetwater, Texas. 

This book looks at a number of women that were pilots, as well as the two leaders, and we see their different stories, and follow them through training and some of their more memorable flights. 

We also see the decades long fight for them to get the same recognition and status as the men that did the same jobs. 

A well-researched book that highlights a notable group of women pioneers in their field. 

Catch-22

Finished September 28
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

I've owned this book for years, but picked it up for the Classic Challenge. I'm glad to get it crossed off the list and portions of it hit home, but overall I can't say that I enjoyed it. My version of it had a new preface by the author, where he talked about his intentions compared to things some critics have said about the book.
The main character in the book is Yossarian, who is a bombardier in the American military during World War II, now stationed in Italy. He has legitimate worries about his survival, and is frustrated with his superior officer's habit of continually raising the number of missions the crews have to do before getting leave back home.
There is a lot here around the bureaucracy of the military, and of governments in general. Whether it is someone who was on a flight manifest for a flight that crashed, and is therefore declared dead, even though he tries to argue that he is right there, or a man who had barely arrived in camp, just dropping off his stuff in his tent before going out on a mission, never to return, and therefore is in limbo. Never formally arrived, so can't be formally declared dead. There are many instances of this sort of thing happening that show the frustration felt by those controlled by the bureaucracy.
There is also a theme around the image of the senior officers, competing for approval from their superiors, for promotion, or for favourable media coverage. Their decisions aren't made for the benefit of the men, or even the strategic military goals, but for personal reasons.
Another theme that really got me angry, as I'm sure it was meant to, was the theme around financial gain. One man, starting out as the chef in the canteen, kept advancing his activity around procurement, making money off trading goods of various types. The situation kept escalating and got to a point where the collateral damage of men's lives, civilian lives, and even battles with the enemy didn't matter at all, as long as money was being made.
The catch-22 of the title alludes to the idea that if you are able to claim to be unfit due to being crazy, then you aren't actually crazy.
As Yossarian watches more and more of the original group of men he works with get killed or injured, or simply disappear, he becomes more and more mired in his hopelessness and fear for his own survival, acting out however he can to protest the situation.

Sky Girls

Finished January 21
Sky Girls: The True Story of the First Women's Cross-Country Air Race by Gene Nora Jessen

This was a fascinating read, and my book club enjoyed it as well. The race this book tells the story of took place in 1929, and the female pilots did the solo race from Clover Field in Santa Monica, California to Cleveland, the site of the Cleveland Air Races. The race was the Women's Air Derby, the first of its kind, although similar races already existed for male pilots. Male Derbys from both the east and the west were also happening at the same time. Once at Cleveland, several of the women pilots would also engage in other races and competitions.
The race had many legs, and the women were timed for each leg, getting a cumulative total that was their race time. There were prizes for each leg, as well as overall prizes. The race follows one woman, Louise Thaden, a little more closely than the others. She was a saleswoman for Travel Air Manufacturing Company, and would be flying one of their fairly new planes.
This book touches on each woman's experiences during the race, their difficulties, and their interactions with others. It was interesting to see the lack of safety considerations, the lack of security for the planes at most of the stops, and the ways in which ordinary people offered assistance when it was needed.
The woman were mostly experienced pilots, and all fairly young. The oldest was born in 1896 and the youngest in 1910. They were mostly American, although one was German and one Australian. One pilot died during the race, likely due to poor airplane design causing carbon monoxide poisoning. Crowds interfered with runway safety, causing the crash of at least one pilot and her subsequent withdrawal from the race. I enjoyed learning about the women themselves, although my book club members all agreed we would have liked to learn more about all of them.
The personalities were wide-ranging from the rebellious, go-my-own-way Pancho Barnes, to the petite, budding actress Blanche Noyes and the boyish Bobbi Trout. All of the women had some mechanical know-how, necessary for pilots of that time.
The stops along the way were well-attended, but not well-managed, and the women found the socializing stressful when they were already tired from their race. But they were mostly gracious, even in the face of those that wanted women to "stay in their place". The support of Will Rogers and Wiley Post were appreciated by the pilots.
I liked the maps that were included, and the epilogue that summarized the pilots' lives after the race. Also of great interest was the Afterword that included a lot of the more general history of women and aviation.
Enlightening overall.

The Greatcoat

Finished December 4
The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore

This ghost story takes place in a Yorkshire town in 1952. Isabel Carey and her husband Philip have just moved there as Philip, a new doctor has joined the medical practice there. Isabel finds the rooms Philip rented stark and cold, and feels that the landlady, who lives upstairs, is watching her. Looking for extra blankets to help with the cold nights, Isabel discovers an old army greatcoat in an upper cupboard, and puts in on the bed. One night she hears knocking and sees a man's face at the window, which frightens her, but she gradually finds that she gains awareness of the man's identity and begins to discover that she has memories that belong to someone else.
As Isabel begins to interact with the man, Alec, she also becomes aware of who holds his ghost to this world, and why.
This is a story of connection beyond life, of lives unfulfilled, and of the tragedy of war.
Very engaging.

Rose Under Fire

Finished September 18
Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wien

Rose Justice is a young American woman flying with the ATA during the later years of World War II. Her father ran a flight school in the US, and she had been flying from a young age. In the ATA she works with Maddie, a young woman we met in the book Code Name Verity. Rose is independent and enthusiastic and with an uncle high up in the War Ministry, she gets some opportunities others don't.
When she gets the chance to fly her uncle to Paris after the city was liberated, she jumps at it, and agrees to ferry a plane back to Britain afterward. But on her trip back, something goes wrong and she ends up captured and taken to Ravensbruck, one of the German's concentration camps.
While Rose is a fictional person, the story of Ravensbruck is not, and the author uses many historical sources to ensure that the story told her is accurate in its fact. This part of the story is difficult and one of the things that helps the reader through it is the knowledge that Rose does survive her experience. The author deliberately limits Rose's knowledge to that which a woman in her situation would be aware of, not giving the full experience of the atrocities of the camp. One other thing that helps the reader through this story is the amazing attitude of the camp victims, the fight they exhibit, the ways of working around the limitations and the cruelties and the risks they take to survive. The small daily rituals, and ways they have of buoying each other up and the small delights they find in their very limited lives.
Rose also writes poetry and the poems written during her time in Ravensbruck and shared with her fellow prisoners there evoke more than the text descriptions, putting the emotion into the experience.
A wonderful book that brings history alive.

The Four Corners of the Sky

Finished June 3
The Four Corners of the Sky by Michael Malone

This novel tells the story of Annie Peregrine Goode, a young woman driven to fly. Annie was left at the home of her aunt in North Carolina by her con artists father when she was seven. He promised to come back, but only showed up a couple of times briefly in later years. Annie was raised by her aunt Sam and her housemate and friend Clark Goode, a pediatrician. But her father Jack had always told her she was a flyer, and from her first foray into the sky at the age of nine, she knew it was true. She took flying lessons and was accepted at Annapolis and became a pilot for the navy. This much we learn early in the novel as Annie is returning to the family home for her 26th birthday, trying to make it before a storm hits.
But this birthday has much more in store for her, setting Annie off on the journey of her life, on the trail of her father, and his latest escapade which involves danger, federal agents, a persistent Miami vice cop, and Cuban history. Annie only wants to know one thing, who was her mother, the one piece of information her father has consistently withheld from her. But the truth brings so much more for Annie, and changes the course of her life forever.
A story that will bring tears to your eyes, make you laugh out loud, and heave a sigh as the story closes. A story that has romance, thrill, and mystery. A story to thoroughly enjoy.

The Beauty Chorus

Finished July 3
The Beauty Chorus by Kate Lord Brown
This novel focuses on women pilots in World War II, specifically the ferry pilots working for the Air Transport Auxiliary. We see the lives of three pilots up close: Evie, a girl from a wealthy privileged background; Stella, married with a young child and trying to find a future for herself; and Megan a girl from Wales who longs to make her dreams come true.
Evie's father Leo works for the Air Ministry and is reluctant at first to have her fly. Stella has come to England from Singapore, leaving her young son with her in-laws in Ireland. Megan is still mourning the loss of her brother, but wants to make a difference in the war and come back to run her parents' farm.
We see the not-so-glamorous lives of the pilots, the hard work and long hours. We also see some of the resentment from the men they serve with, while other men respect the hard work they do.
This was eye-opening and very interesting in showing a side of war I hadn't been aware of before, and oddly enough one also touched on in another book I am reading. It's nice to learn history and be well entertained at the same time.