Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History

Keith O'Brien

Aug 2018 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Erin Bennett

About this audiobook

Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly, and deadly, pursuit. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky. O'Brien weaves together the stories of five remarkable women: Florence Klingensmith, a high school dropout who worked for a dry cleaner in Fargo, North Dakota; Ruth Elder, an Alabama divorcee; Amelia Earhart, the most famous, but not necessarily the most skilled; Ruth Nichols, who chafed at the constraints of her blue blood family's expectations; and Louise Thaden, the mother of two young kids who got her start selling coal in Wichita. Together, they fought for the chance to race against the men-and in 1936 one of them would triumph in the toughest race of all.

About the author

Keith O'Brien is an award-winning journalist, a former reporter for the Boston Globe, and a regular contributor to National Public Radio and Politico. He has written for the New York Times Magazine and reported stories for This American Life.

Erin Bennett is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based voice actress whose passion for storytelling informs her love of narrating audiobooks. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner, she has recorded titles in a wide array of genres. Her voice-over work spans animation, radio plays for the BBC, video games, and commercials.