“Where’d she head after that?” she asked, refilling her friend’s glass.
“Bandung.”
“Where?”
“Java. On from there to Darwin, then New Guinea.” Louise sipped. “Then came what was always going to be the trickiest part. She was heading for Hawaii, but she needed one refuel on the way. She’d picked this dot in the Pacific—”
“Howland Island. Yeah, I remember. Wait a second.” Roxy rose, went to the bookshelves. There was an atlas up there. After blowing dust off it, she looked at the inscription in copperplate on the inside cover: “Richard Loewen. Aged eleven. Happy Birthday from your father and mother.” Her dad had received it when he was a boy, which meant it was fifty years old. Still. She flicked the atlas open to the South Pacific.
Louise peered. “It’s somewhere…here.” She tapped open water, near the drawing of a whale. “There’re actually lots of islands here, mostly uninhabited. We’re claiming some, the Japanese are claiming some—it’s a mess. But we’ve built a runway on Howland. That’s where she was heading.”
“Last contact?”
“There’d been some messages, but the communication systems were poor. We haven’t heard them all yet.” She sighed. “Some say there was a message when she was close. Garbled. Also, the weather was terrible. And the radio announcer when I stopped at that hotel? He announced the storm’s gotten so bad no search flights have taken off in twenty-four hours. Even the ships are making for port.” Her voice broke. “I’m scared, Roxy. She…she—”
“Hush, now.” Roxy got up, went to the window. A noise had drawn her, distant, small, but recognizable. She stared into the immensity of blue until she saw it, a black speck. Wings flashed in the sunlight. “Hey, Lou,” she called, “think that’s Amelia up there?”
“Kid—”
Roxy watched the speck until it had vanished, listened until all the sound was gone. The airplane seemed to take something from her with it, that numbness in her chest that had been there for months. Suddenly, the feeling lifted, dispersing in the high summer clouds. She turned back. “Two things I know, Louise,” she said, crossing to sit again before her friend. “First, that there is no chance in God’s blue heaven Amelia has crashed into the Pacific.”
“Glad you’re so sure. And the second?”
“The second is that I’m going to go find her. Which means you’re going to find me a plane.”
“Hey! That’s three things.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Roxy Loewen.
Author’s Note
I remember the exact moment when the idea for this novel completely changed. Like many of life’s great moments, this one involved beer.
A few months before the pint in question, I’d come up with the concept of a pilot in the 1930s and an art heist, set against the backdrop of the Berlin Olympics and ending on the Hindenburg’s disastrous final voyage. The main character was to be Jack Warren, gun-and-rum runner, a “tarnished knight” of the kind I like to write about, a man ruined by experience (and perhaps by a woman), seeking solace in whisky and money but really seeking redemption in a cause, along the lines of Rick in Casablanca.
Then, one day in the late winter of 2016, I was in London and met my former editor Jon Wood of Orion, at the Black Friar pub. Though I’d moved on, changed publishers and written two books for Penguin Random House, we were still good friends. I told him the rough story of the new idea. He swigged, looked at me and said, “Why not make the pilot a woman?”
And so Roxy Loewen was born.
(I should add that Jon has “form,” as we say in England, in drinking and changing my writing life. In 2005, after two bottles of claret at Blacks Club in Soho, he mumbled the name Dracula to me, and my novel Vlad, the Last Confession began.)
The rabbit hole of research led me to the lives of those extraordinary women flyers of the 1930s. Defying prejudice, determined to get airborne, these gals did everything the men did, and more. Amelia Earhart is the best known, for her records and, perhaps, her mysterious demise. But there were many others as brilliant—Beryl Markham, Louise Thaden and the cigar-chewing, whisky-quaffing, sexual adventurer Pancho Barnes. These are just a few. Roxy is a mix of several, yet also very much her own gal.
Thus the plot changed for the better. (I find women often have this effect on my life!) I wanted a love affair at the heart of things, and Roxy was so independent that she would only fall for a certain kind of guy. Hence Jocco Zomack was born. He has the idealism she thinks she doesn’t care about. As always, love changes everything.
I’ve always believed that research in historical fiction is not so much about the details, though it is important to get them right. What research does for me is act as a springboard for my imagination. It launches me in cool, unforeseen directions. Discovering that there may have been an original Fall of Icarus painted on wood was one of those launches. Reading that the tightly scripted, Teutonically efficient opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics was hijacked by five thousand crapping pigeons was another. Not to mention the little detail of Spaniards in early civil war Madrid pouring chocolate sauce over everything, including sardines!
There’s always the book too, the one that contains the most springboards. I found it amid the crazy piles and teetering shelves of one of the world’s great second-hand bookstores, Macleod’s, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Looking under “Aviation,” among all the glossy spines of coffee table tomes, I noticed a squat book with a battered black spine that had no writing on it. Irresistible. I pulled it out to discover its title: Aviation Manual. Published in the 1930s by the Popular Science Publishing Co., Inc., New York, it had everything. From the specificity of a water-cooled Wright J-4 engine to how to land a biplane on a bumpy field in a crosswind. I swear that after reading it, I could take to the air in a Lockheed Vega and have a reasonable chance of not dying. If anyone cares to join me, I promise not to attempt the falling leaf first time up. Though I make no guarantee about barrel rolls.
The manual made the book in so many ways, but several others also aided greatly. Amelia Earhart, a biography by Tanya Lee Stone, and especially Powder Puff Derby, by Mike Walker, were great on the women flyers of the 1930s; though the best book about being a woman pilot, the passion and the power, was beautifully written by one of them: Beryl Markham, with her West with the Night. Michael Hart’s memoirs were filled with good stories. Michael M. Mooney’s The Hindenburg had great detail—even if I don’t agree with his conclusion that the disaster was bomb related. Another fascinating book with a similarly conspiratorial premise was The Search for Amelia Earhart, by Fred Goerner.
I do like actual books for research, and my desk gradually becomes covered with them. But I’d be a fool to ignore the internet and its wonders. From being able to swiftly discover the price for a mickey of Scotch in 1936 to…
Well, one thing was a little film I watched on YouTube on the brilliant but defiantly Nazi flyer Hanna Reitsch. Look her up, she’s worth it. As a test pilot for jets during the war, she’d had a terrible crash. Doctors told her she’d never fly again due to vestibular disorders, or balance issues. She regained that balance and took to the air once more by doing what Roxy does—walking along the apex of high buildings.
There are great websites on that amazing airship the Hindenburg. The most comprehensive I found was http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/. This had every detail, from photos of the dining service to the full specs of the engines. The routes, the schedules, the passenger and crew lists…the wallpaper. Wonderful.
But I also got an app. Hindenburg 3DA 5 by Michal Barta let me use my iPhone to actually walk through the whole vessel. Into the cabins and lounges, along the gantries. Be where the passengers and crew smoked and drank, ate and played cards. Allowed me to study the decor and experience that vast, cathedral-like interior. (Though I am quite inept at moving about. My thirteen-year old-son, Reith, had to rescue me more than once when I got stuck among the gas bags at the top of the ship and couldn’t get
down!)
My passion for flight is not merely random, I come by it naturally. My dad was Flight Lieutenant Peter Humphreys, Royal Air Force, Battle of Britain, Hurricane pilot, later shot down in North Africa. He survived; otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this. But his tales of flights and dogfights and the joys and terrors of being aloft certainly inspired much within these pages. This book is dedicated to him, in great gratitude.
There are, as always, so many people to thank for what you are now holding in your hand. On the home front, my son, Reith, for all high-tech assistance. My wife, Aletha, for all the support, advice and yummy food. While on the business end…
As with a pilot, though writing may sometimes seem a solo flight, there are so many who allow me to soar, who get and keep the bird in the air. A novel is very much a team effort. The mechanics might be that great crew at Doubleday Canada in Toronto, who actually print the book, or set the file, that you are reading now, its “paint job” (or cover) designed by the wonderful Rachel Cooper. Then there is the man who gets the word out about the next “stunt,” makes sure that I show up at events on time and relatively sober, and pulls the chocks away to get me airborne in public—my tireless, affable and ever-dapper publicist, Max Arambulo.
Yet no air force gets off the ground without the senior personnel back at base. My publishers at Doubleday are wonderfully supportive—from Air Commodore Brad Martin, the CEO of Penguin Random House Canada; through Air Marshal Kristin Cochrane, president and publisher at PRHC; onto my former flying partner (editor) now promoted to squadron leader (publisher) at Doubleday, Amy Black.
My final and deepest thanks, though, have to go to my new editor, Zoe Maslow. The perfect co-pilot, she got me back on course when I lost my way across country, and pulled me out of many a stall. Her hand on the stick was light but firm; she knew exactly when to push the throttle way forward, and when to ease back. Her taste is impeccable, not least in gin-based cocktails. Roxy would not be half the gal she is without Zoe. Brava!
It has been a privilege to spend time with the men and women of Doubleday—and with the aviatrixes (yes, it is so a word!) of the 1930s. What they achieved in that male-dominated world was extraordinary. I could go on with their praises for pages, if Roxy wasn’t telling me to shuddup and roll us another cigarette.
So I will.
C. C. Humphreys
Salt Spring Island, British Columbia
May 1, 2018
Chasing the Wind Page 28
