Her Last Flight: A Novel

Sydney M. Williams“Her Last Flight,” Beatriz WilliamsAugust 8, 2020“I am Persistence, Olle. I am Curiosity. I am Heartbreak. I am Survival. I am Recklessness and Perseverance. You can’t win.” The narrator, Janey Everett speaking to Olle Lindquist Her Last Flight, 2020 Beatriz Williams (1972-)This novel is loosely based on Amelia Earhart and the mystery surrounding her disappearance. We visit Burbank, California where the heroine of this novel Irene Foster learns to fly. It was from Burbank that Ms. Earhart used to fly. We spend two weeks on Howland Island, a coral reef just north of the equator in the central Pacific, which was Earhart’s destination when she disappeared in July 1937. We travel to Guernica in April 1937, right after Germany bombed this small village in the Basque region of Spain, a horror depicted in Picasso’s eponymous painting. We meet historical characters like Stanley Bruce, Prime Minister of Australia and John Baird, Lord Stonehaven, Governor General of Australia.Like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon women, Beatriz’s women are strong and determined. She has George Morrow (based on George P. Putnam who married Amelia Earhart in 1932) say to Foster, “The great story of our time isn’t this Volstead business; it’s the emancipation of the female sex.” We meet Irene Foster, who is based on Amelia Earhart, a “tall and athletic” girl, on the beach in Santa Monica in March 1928 where she surfs in the early morning. There she meets Sam Mallory, a famous pilot who surfs and flies out of an airport in Burbank. Irene falls in love with flying, and she falls in love with Sam.As in all her books, there are different timelines – 1928, 1937 and 1947, with flashbacks to 1944 Paris where Janey Everett, the narrator of this story, was stationed as an army photojournalist. Janey, who is researching a story on Sam Mallory, follows a lead to Irene Foster. She tracks down the reclusive aviatrix to Hanalei, Hawaii (a small town on the north shore of Kauai). Irene had disappeared on a flight in 1937, somewhere in the western Mediterranean while participating in a solo round-the-world race. Now, living under the radar and avoiding all publicity, she is married to a pleasant, protective man, Olle Lindquist. While Janey narrates the 1947 timeline, the other timelines are excerpts from her journal, titled “Aviatrix,” which tells the story of Sam and Irene.Janey’s persistence causes the retiring Irene to gradually open up. Her looks attract Leo, Olle’s son by a former marriage. Her journal provides the reader the background to the story. Beatriz is at her best when writing suspense: Irene’s emergency landing on Howland Island, minus one engine and without fuel; the German bombing of an airfield in republican-dominated Basque country in 1937, and surfing a killer wave” in Hawaii: “This monster rises up behind me and gathers me in its mighty jaws and spits me to shore in a jumble of board and bone and hair and salt water…” And she philosophizes: Janey, thinking back on her time in Paris, remembers lost loves: “You cannot call back those you have lost, however much your bones ache with missing them, however giant and mysterious the holes they leave behind.” Also, as in all her books, this one has a twist at the end, an O. Henry-like surprise, which I did not catch. But, if you read carefully, the clues are there. An exciting and enjoyable read.

Over the years, I've read lots of historical fiction by Beatriz Williams. Yet I can't recall a single novel that reimagined a real-life icon. So when I picked up Her Last Flight, I knew I was in for an, ahem, departure. Because as its weighty title suggests, this book explores the age-old question: What really happened to Amelia Earhart?And you thought I was kidding when I made that crack about an Earhart girls trip.In some ways, the premise is simple. Because although a lot of things happen in this book, they're all rooted in this: Just Amelia, or as she's called, Irene, and her mentor Sam on a desert island. Nothing to do and nowhere to go, the seconds ticking away on the time bomb of when-will-they-do-it? It's an old trope, lending characters' fantasies a license they wouldn't otherwise have. Not that it's salacious. Oh, no. Williams is nothing if not classy, shrouding the rendezvous in so much secrecy that you'll wonder if it even happened.Told in two timelines, Her Last Flight spans the late '20s to '40s to laud and deconstruct a legend. Sparkling with Williams' signature twists, it's an old-fashioned love story, one imperiled by fate and fame. Romantic and suspenseful, it has all the elements of good historical fiction. Still, I can't help but prefer Williams' other novels, especially the Schuyler sisters series (although now that I think about it, Tiny Little Thing may be a tiny nod to Jackie O.). Maybe because they allow Williams to color more boldly outside the lines. Or maybe because I'm not big on being a passenger in an airplane, much less the pilot. Either way, Her Last Flight is less of a girls' trip and more of a brunch. You know. Perfectly enjoyable, but you're a little too full after forcing that third croissant.I do still wonder what happened to Amelia, though. Because I'm with Williams in her hope that the clouds she flew through at least had a silver lining.

This is a knock your socks off read! Beautifully written, and wonderfully told, it’s a story of enduring love, restless humans, and the ties that bind. A must read for fans of BW. Her best book yet, in my humble opinion.

What a delightful book. Twists, turns, mysteries, and murder. Just fabulous.I've been interested in the 'beginning' of flight all my life. With this work by Beatriz Williams, I'm ready to read more about the women who were brave enough to head straight into a this bastion of young men fearlessly taking to the skies. Barnstormers, acrobatic fliers, call them what you will, their exploits began the legends of the flying aces. Then, a young woman reluctantly decides to join their ranks. Now we begin our story.Told through the eyes of a young Irene Lindquist, and an older Irene, with Janey Everett pushing the story throughout, we learn of a young woman, Irene, enamored with a young man, Sam Mallory. He's a flyer and teaches HER about flying. At some point, the student becomes the star and they go their separate ways. At the height of Irene's career, she vanishes.Now Janey has 'found' the lost flyer, Irene, on Kauai and wants to tell her story. Janey also has a connection with Irene's young man, Sam, and wants to find out more about him. She also wants to let Irene know about his fate. That's all I'll say about the storyline. I don't want to give any more away!This is my first Beatriz Williams book. I'm now a fan! Brilliant writing, and you can tell a lot of research was done about the time period and the beginning of flight.

This is my favourite Novel by Beatriz Williams to date. The characters were so well developed and descriptions so vivid. Beautifully written in all ways.

Es entretenido y -aunque ficticio- da informacion

Loved it. Fast paced and good old fashioned rollicking story. Beatrix has a very distinct style of writing which I personally greatly enjoy.

Well written novel; however, way too many flashbacks (every second chapter)

I enjoy reading novels by Beatriz Williams. However the number of howlers simply means that the proof reader wasn’t ver goog. For example, the heroine of the novel looked out of her hotel window in Melbourne, Australia and saw the Parliament buildings, which actually in Canberra, many, many miles away. Also, her lover in World War II was killed in a bombing raid over Cologne in the winter of 1945, 7 months after the war in Europe ended. This Alastair’s mistake appears multiple times. One wonders if any of the other dates in this book, which goes back and forth from the late 1920s to 1947, are reliable.