“Santa Monica, 1923. The plane rattled, as if with fever. The engine spit once, and then, like a ruptured heart, my Curtiss OX-5 engine burst, spewing hot oil from both sides of its chest. My plane was shaking violently and as I rumbled through the air, one last rivet held the tin cover firmly on the engine. That tiny bolt pulsated like a bead of rain on a snare. I watched it as it finally gave way. It popped like a cork, setting free a giant square of sheet metal.”
That’s a passage from the first page of Carole Hopson’s novel A Pair of Wings. The speaker is Bessie Coleman, the first black woman to earn a pilot’s license. This novel, based on her life, is divided into three parts.
Part one, begins in Chicago in 1915 when Bessie moves to Chicago from Texas to earn money and realize her childhood dream of becoming a pilot. Through her job as a manicurist in a barbershop, she makes two key connections—one with a well-connected newspaper owner who finds a flight school that will accept a black woman and another with a wealthy beau who helps fund her dream.
Part two takes place in France, Holland, and Germany where she learns to fly. Part three, Barnstormer finds her back in America performing flying tricks to earn money to open her own flight school.
The author is a Boeing 737 captain for United Airlines in the United
States, where Black women account for less than one percent of all professional pilots. If you’re interested in a fascinating story of one woman’s pursuit of realizing a life-long dream against all odds, then you must read A Pair of Wings by Carole Hopson.
