Call it love at first flight. Barbara Cushman Rowell was already a powerhouse by anyone’s measure, but it wasn’t until she tried flying that she found the inner fulfillment and sense of self she’d longed for all her life. As the driving force behind husband Galen Rowell’s business success, Barbara’s adventures and accomplishments had always been the byproduct of her husband’s career. Until, that is, she took off and sailed into a strata all her own. FLYING SOUTH is the hair-raising, reflective, and ultimately inspiring story of
Barbara’s trip of a lifetime—a 25,000-mile, 57-leg journey through Latin America and the recesses of her soul, discovering unrealized self-confidence, irrepressible resourcefulness, and vast reserves of emotional and physical strength she never knew she had. And what a journey it was. She recounts landing in the middle of a coup in Panama, narrowly escaping disaster when key flight instruments failed over Peru, flying herself to an oral surgeon after a mouth-smashing rafting accident on the Bio Bio River in Chile, fighting plane-shredding winds over the Andes, and surviving a life-threatening and disorienting tropical storm off the coast of Brazil—all while navigating the pervasive and demoralizing chauvinism of the aviation world. But much more than a harrowing page-turner, Barbara’s tale of finding herself through flight inspires us all to go after the experiences we long for, and to live the lives we only wish for.
