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Monday, March 14, 2011

Monday Book: Daughter of the Air, by Rob Simbeck


Daughter of the Air: The Brief Soaring Life of Cornelia Fort, by Rob Simbeck
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999
239 pages plus Acknowledgments and Notes, Sources and Bibliography, and Index. 8 pages of b&w photos

Description
Cornelia Fort's (1919-1943) career as one of America's first demale army pilots took her far from home-to Hawaii and later to Delaware and California as a member of the WAFS, the first women's flight squadron. In a remarkable coincidence of fate, she was in the air at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. Throughout her short, extraordinary life she recorded her experiences in eloquent letters.

When Cornelia Fort fell in love with flying, she was forced to defy her family-one of Nashville's oldest and most prominent-and social pressure in order to become an aviator. But from the moment she first set foot in a plane, she found a consuming passion and a mission in life. With a love of flying and a lust for life, Cornelia Fort, like Beryl Markham and Amelia Earhart, came to personify the female pilot.

In Daughter of the Air, author Rob Simbeck interweaves Cornelia Fort's own eloquent letters and diaries with historical documents and interviews of those who knew and flew with her to create a vivid portrait of this courageous woman. Daughter of the Air tells both Cornelia's remarkable story - a life shaped by bravery, intelligence and charm-and the political and social atmosphere of the day.

The Table of contents does not have named chapters.

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