Circling the Globe (AFW Mar/Apr 2024)
This article was published in the March/April 2024 issue of Aviation for Women Magazine.
Polly Vacher earned her pilot’s license at age 51 and eight years later in 2003, having already circumnavigated the Earth solo from west to east, departed Birmingham Airport on another solo flight to circle the globe over the North and South Poles. She tells the story of this record-making flight in support of the charity Flying Scholarships for the Disabled in her memoir, Wings Around the World: The Exhilarating Story of One Woman’s Epic Flight from the North Pole to Antarctica. In the historical fiction novel Great Circle, author Maggie Shipstead gives us a fictional character, Marion Graves, who sets out in post-WWII 1940’s with the same goal—to circumnavigate the world from North to South.
Travel writer and novelist Maggie Shipstead was at Auckland International Airport when she spotted the statue of Jean Batten who set many long-distance records, including first person to fly solo from England to New Zealand in 1936 in just over 11 days, a record that went unbroken for 44 years. Batten inspired the character Marion Graves, whose life we follow from birth through the barnstorming, bootlegging 1920s, to WWII England to fly for the Air Transport Auxiliary, and on to her circumnavigation attempt. Shipstead opens the novel from Marion’s perspective with a variation of a quote on Jean Batten’s statue, “I was born to be a wanderer.” Marion goes on to lament the impossibility of a true ‘great circle’ flight over the poles, saying, “the course was distorted by necessity: the indifferent distribution of islands and airfields, the plane’s need for fuel.”
Even without the extra stops for fundraising on her route, Polly Vacher would still have zig-zagged through the continents as shown on the chart in Wings Around the World. No surprise, Antarctica proves to be the most confounding challenge for both our real and fictional protagonists. Even so, Vacher raised an impressive £400,000 for Flying Scholarships for the Disabled. As executed, she made 106 stops, visiting 34 countries on every continent in 550 flight hours over 352 days in her Piper Dakota. Along the way she set the world record for first woman to fly solo over the North Pole in a single engine aircraft, first woman to fly solo in Antarctica, and first person to fly solo around the world landing on all seven continents.
Each of these stories is gripping in its own way. Great Circle is a sprawling saga with richly drawn characters and gorgeously concise ‘incomplete histories’ sprinkled throughout that anchor us in the relevant contemporary context, many of which reference aviation exploits across the first half of the 20th century. The story is enhanced by the present-day perspective of Hadley Baxter, a Hollywood movie star cast as Marion, a role she hopes will redefine her acting career. Wings Around the World focuses on the preparation and year-long journey of an inspiring adventure seeker and philanthropist, all the more encouraging for the phase of life in which she pursued her endeavor.
Join us in the Aviatrix Book Club to discuss Wings Around the World in April, Great Circle in May, and find my interviews with both authors forthcoming on the Literary Aviatrix website, YouTube Channel, and podcast.
If you’re interested in reading more about Jean Batten, the pioneering New Zealand pilot who inspired the character Marion, check out Fiona Kidman’s fictional biography Infinite Air, and for young readers ages 5-7, Sky High: Jean Batten’s Incredible Flying Adventures, by David Hill and Phoebe Morris.
I look forward to meeting you at the Authors Connect booth at WAI 2024. Blue Skies and Happy Reading!
