The Roaring 20
Margaret Whitman Blair
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2006 National Geographic Society
ISBN: 0792253892

The First Cross-Country Air Race for Women.

1929 was a glorious year for the spills & thrills in the new age of flight, culminating in the National Air Races & Aeronautical Exposition in Cleveland, Ohio, at which the legendary Charles Lindbergh will make an appearance.

It will also feature a 9 day, 2,800 mile cross-country air race from Santa Monica in California across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana & onwards to Ohio. These women, with death-defying courage, will fly by day in open cockpits over deserts, mountains & the Great Plains, & camp by night in grueling heat, surviving adventure & excitement!

It's the heyday of the Jazz Age, during that summer of innocence before the Wall Street Crash that started the avalanche into the Great Depression, & women have found new roles for themselves. Some are determined to prove they can be as bold as men & in the field of aviation, the sky's the limit for the members of the “Powder Puff Derby”.

So pick up a copy of The Roaring 20 & fly along with:
Florence ‘Pancho’ Barnes: a Californian & granddaughter of the Civil War balloonist Thaddeus Lowe. She is a wild card, does stunt flying for the movies & organized the men's stunt flyers union.
Marvel Crosson: built her plane with her brother with whom she barnstormed around California before moving to Alaska. She held the women's flying record for altitude.
Amelia Earhart: famous as the first woman to be a passenger on a flight across the Atlantic Ocean. She's determined to do her own flying this time.
Ruth Elder: crashed into the Atlantic trying to be the first woman to fly to Europe. After her rescue she went into movies.
Claire Mae Fahy: her husband Herb, a record breaking test pilot, taught her to fly.
Edith Foltz: a barnstormer with her husband, was the first to land in Walla Walla, Washington. She was still flying in Powder Puff Derbys in the 1950s.
Mary Haizlip: the youngest pilot, married her instructor, WWI aviation hero, Jim Haizlip who ran a flight school in Oklahoma. She set a women's speed record of 255 mph.
Jessie ‘Chubby’ Keith-Miller: an Australian famous as the first woman to reach Australia by air.
Opal Kunz: wife of a Tiffany VP, shocked her high-society friends when she decided to join the Race. She used her “in” at Tiffany's to design the 99's badge.
Ruth Nichols: an experience professional flyer was the first woman to fly to every state.
Blanche Noyes: hometown favorite, quit acting to marry Dewey who bought her first plane & taught her how to fly. She was the first licensed woman pilot in Ohio.
Gladys O'Donnell: taught to fly by her husband was active in the 99's women pilots organization.
Phoebe Omlie: a famous barnstormer & stunt flyer, she & her husband ran a flying school.
Neva Paris: from Kansas City, Missouri, received her flying license in 1920, & worked for Curtis-Wright demonstrating new planes. She was one of the main organizers of the 99s.
Margaret Perry: having just started flying that year, had a commercial transport license. During the Race she had to drop out due to typhoid fever.
Thea Rasche: Germany's first female stunt & aerobatic flyer.
Louise Thader: a college dropout, held the women's records for speed, altitude & endurance.
Evelyn ‘Bobbi’ Trout: the only woman in the Race who could be her own mechanic.
Mary Von Mach: one of the less experienced flyers of the Race.
Vera Dawn Walker: prior to the Race she had been a daring wing-walker & an extra in movies.

Now, open at page one & get set for an astonishing adventure, complete with a map of the race, & photographs of the era, the “gals”, their supporters, the planes, & the newspaper headlines.

& what set Margaret Whitman Blair researching about the Power Puff Derby? She was interviewing pioneer flyer Fay Gillis Wells for a cable tv history series when she mentioned how that Race had inspired her to get into flying, to becoming the first woman to parachute from a disabled plane as well as the first American woman to fly in Russia.

As you read The Roaring 20, you will be transported back to a very different time & into a crowd of remarkable women.

Absolutely outstanding!

More from Margaret Whitman Blair:
House of Spies: Danger in Civil War Washington
The Sand Castle: Blockade Running and the Battle of Fort Fisher
Brothers at War: a Civil War reenactment goes wrong.
(03/26/06)

Rebecca