Great Circle
SynopsisPlot
After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. Thereafter encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles.
Story
About this book
Marian and Jamie Graves begin life dramatically, rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914 and raised by an unreliable uncle in Missoula, Montana. When barnstorming pilots pass through town in worn biplanes, young Marian finds the fixation that shapes her life. At fourteen she leaves school, and a wealthy bootlegger becomes her dangerous patron, paying for a plane and lessons. That arrangement carries a lasting cost.
The novel carries Marian across decades and continents, from Prohibition-era Montana to wartime London, the shores of New Zealand, and the ice of Antarctica. She guards her independence at the expense of close ties, resisting a childhood sweetheart and moving through a series of relationships, while her ambition narrows toward one goal: flying around the Earth over both poles.
A second strand begins more than fifty years later, when Hadley Baxter, a troubled film star, is cast as Marian on screen and finds her research leading somewhere she did not expect. The book was named a Book of the Year by publications including The Times, The Economist, Time, and Oprah Daily. The Telegraph and New Statesman also listed it.
