Soaring in Story (AFW Sep/Oct 2023)

My first glider experience was last year after a fellow retired Coast Guard pilot invited me to go up with him sometime. It turned out to be everything I was looking for in aviation at this point in my life, especially with an instructor like my friend whose enthusiasm for it is contagious. I want to fly when I can but can’t afford the time or money to go very frequently right now. After years of operating in the busy airspace in South Florida and elsewhere during my Coast Guard career, I welcomed the opportunity to fly in quieter airspace, especially if I’m not maintaining a high level of proficiency, and I absolutely love chasing clouds and birds. As it turns out, this wasn’t just another box to check on my general aviation bucket-list—I’m a total convert. 

So, when I curated the Aviatrix Book Club reading list for 2023, I was excited to add gliders to the types of aircraft featured in our books. There were two promising candidates, so we paired them for discussion in June— Skybound: One Woman’s Journey in Flight by Rebecca Loncraine, and Crosswind: A Novel, by Patricia Valdata. 

Skybound is Rebecca’s memoir of learning to soar during her emotional and physical healing journey as a cancer survivor. The story begins in Rebecca’s hometown in the Black Mountains in Wales, where she describes the beauty and wonder of experiencing her familiar territory from the air for the first time. When winter looms and she faces a season without her new love, we follow her to New Zealand where she flies some of the most extreme gliding in the world. Rebecca’s cancer returned while she was working on her memoir, and her family published the book posthumously. We are fortunate to experience this joyous journey through the perspective of someone who cherished every moment. 

Crosswind was a perfect complement to Skybound as a work of fiction about a young woman on her own healing journey from the tragic and unexpected loss of both of her parents in quick succession. Ellen Horvath is adrift in her mourning, saddled with overwhelming debt, and facing a dead-end, uninspiring career at the local plant, when she takes a drive through the country one day and sees a glider soaring overhead. She follows it to the fictional Crosswind airfield and finds the warm embrace of a community who helps her navigate to healing and new opportunities.

In my interview with author Pat Valdata, she shared that parts of the novel were inspired by her own experiences, including the inciting incident: her own father’s unexpected death while she was in college. Pat, a journalism and English major in undergrad, wrote this novel as her Master’s creative thesis. She taught college English and creative writing for many years as her day job, and pursued gliding as her passion. Eventually, Pat also certified in powered aircraft and became a CFIG—Certified Flight Instructor – Glider. She is a founding member of the Women’s Soaring Pilots Association and has soared in picturesque locations around the world. She credits the affordability of gliding and the welcoming soaring community with fulfilling her dream of becoming a pilot. 

Among Pat’s other passions are poetry and women’s aviation history.  She has combined the two beautifully in Where No Man Can Touch, a collection of over sixty ‘persona poems’, in which she embodies the voices of pioneering aviatrices from 1798 to 1953, offering readers a moment reflective of each woman’s experiences and contributions in her time.

You can find my interview with Pat, which includes our discussion about gliding and a reading from both books, on the Literary Aviatrix website, YouTube channel, and podcast. 

Blue Skies, and Happy Reading!