Amazon.com Review
"The plane slips from a spool of blue, stitches a confident loop in the sky. Willa stands by the hangar as the Moth roars above her head, growl of open throttle. The single figure in the rear cockpit waves as the plane flies low over the harbor airfield and then pulls up into a vertical climb. Up and up, the line so straight it could have been drawn with a ruler, could have been a harp string, the plane a note ascending." Grace O'Gorman, the star-bright aviatrix of Helen Humphreys's debut novel, Leaving Earth, adores her Moth--a two-seat, open-cockpit biplane. It's the 1930s, and together they have wowed the world with stunts, solo long-distance flights, and other record-breaking trips. Glamorous "Air Ace" Grace feels most at home aloft, as opposed to down on Earth, in Toronto, with her husband. That, along with her competitiveness and affinity for fame, is why she's setting out to break the world flight endurance record. She teams up with a young female flyer, Willa Briggs, to circle Toronto for 25 days in August 1933.
In a spare yet warm style, Humphreys unfurls the pair's airborne life. She conjures the physical miseries it inflicts on the body--brought on by rain, cramped space, exhaustion--and makes the subtleties of that exhaustion clear as a cloudless sky. But beyond descriptions of physical discomfort is the emotional distress and elation Willa goes through, to which the author gives exquisite nuance. There's loneliness that forces introspection, yet joy washes over Willa, too--joy for a stripped-down life in the sky with Grace, with whom she is falling in love. Over the roar of the wind Grace and Willa develop a poetic sign language. Around this and around the experience of the sky, Humphreys winds Willa's highs and lows.
Following the Moth's flight is 11-year-old Maddy, whose father and Jewish mother work at a fading amusement park on the Toronto Islands. Maddy worships Grace and so naturally spends her August days tracking the circling biplane. Meanwhile her parents worry about work in the face of the depression and watch a growing anti-Semitism invade their home. From the earth and the sky Humphreys shapes a keen story about human frailty and potential, set when aviation was all about glamour, and World War II not so far away. Here, fear spreads and intimacy blooms. --Katherine Alberg
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Toronto in 1933 provides the setting for this captivating first novel about two aviatrixes who attempt to set a new world endurance record by flying 25 days nonstop, circling the city in the open cockpit of their Moth biplane. Veteran barnstormer "Air Ace" Grace O'Gorman chooses novice Willa Briggs as a last-minute replacement for her ailing co-pilot. As days pass, mechanical failures, nasty weather and chronic fatigue threaten to curtail the flight, while the two pilots, hoarse from yelling over the roar of the wind, become close friends, communicating through sign and touch. Meanwhile, in a parallel earthbound plot, young Maddy Stewart, who idolizes Air Ace Grace, struggles to maintain her equilibrium when her Jewish mother, a carnival fortune-teller, becomes the target of a Nazi-inspired hate group. The two plots intersect when Maddy pulls the fliers from their beached aircraft. Inspired by an actual event that occurred in the skies over Miami, Fla., Humphreys has captured the courage and commitment of aviation's unsung pioneers, the sights and sounds of earth and sky and the somber mood of 1930s Toronto, all with a precise lyricism that amply demonstrates her talent as a poet. (Sept.) FYI: Humphreys has received the Governor's General Prize for her poetry, and the Vancouver Sun named her Best Young Canadian Novelist in 1997.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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