Jane Mendelsohn is de auteur van drie romans die de complexiteit van menselijke identiteit en geschiedenis onderzoeken. Haar schrijfstijl kenmerkt zich door scherp inzicht in de karakterpsychologie en een lyrische prozastijl. Mendelsohn verweeft meesterlijk persoonlijke verhalen met bredere maatschappelijke thema's, en creëert werken die lang na de laatste pagina bij de lezer blijven hangen.
A powerful parable for ultra-globalized times. - Vogue Mendelsohn has written a book for the ages. . . . This is literature of the first order. -Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon Powerful. . . . Thrilling. . . . There are flashes of stunning beauty. - Paste Oracular, dazzling. . . . Gorgeous, feverishly imaginative. - Booklist (starred review)
In this brilliantly imagined novel, Amelia Earhart tells us what happened after she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared off the coast of New Guinea one glorious, windy day in 1937. And she tells us about herself. There is her love affair with flying ("The sky is flesh") . . . . There are her memories of the past: her childhood desire to become a heroine ("Heroines did what they wanted") . . . her marriage to G.P. Putnam, who promoted her to fame, but was willing to gamble her life so that the book she was writing about her round-the-world flight would sell out before Christmas. There is the flight itself -- day after magnificent or perilous or exhilarating or terrifying day ("Noonan once said any fool could have seen I was risking my life but not living it"). And there is, miraculously, an island ("We named it Heaven, as a kind of joke"). And, most important, there is Noonan . . .