FLY GIRLS

'How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History' is the sub-title title of this riveting account that puts us in the cockpit with Amelia Earhart and other brave women who took to the skies in the unreliable flying machines of the 1920s and 30s. The five remarkable women are Florence Klingensmith, a high school dropout from Fargo, North Dakota, Ruth Elder an Alabama divorcee, Amelia Earhart, the most famous, but not necessarily the most skilled, Ruth Nichols, who chafed at her Blue Blood family?s expectations, and Louise Thaden, a young mother of two who got her start selling coal in Wichita. Together they fought the chance to fly and race aeroplanes and in 1936, one of them was to triumph, beating the men in the toughest race of them all. The prose reverberates with fiery crashes, then stings with the tragedy of lives lost, and sometimes equally heart-breaking stories on the ground. Reminder mark 338 page paperback with illustrations.