Great Circle

Resumen del libro

From the days of giant passenger ships sliding past Arctic icebergs, to the daring pilots of WWII, to present-day Hollywood and its malcontents, at the core of this story is the indomitable Marian Graves and her twin brother Jamie who are twice abandoned by their parents. Marian and Jamie grow up roaming Montana forests, more comfortable with landscape than with people.

When a pair of aerobats take their exhilarating show to a nearby airfield, Marian's life is changed forever. Watching them roll, dive, and loop in their mini plane, she can think of nothing else but flying. As she grows into a woman, she sacrifices everything to command the breathtaking sense of freedom, of utter control over her own fate, that she feels when in the air.

She becomes one of the most fearless pilots of her time, and in 1949 she sets out to do what no one has done before: fly the Great Circle around the earth, north to south around the poles. Shortly before completing the journey, her plane disappears, lost to history. In 2015, Hadley Baxter, former child star and poster girl of the blockbuster Archangel franchise, has just been fired for cheating on her on-screen boyfriend.

Struggling to escape the fury of the fans, she grasps at an offer for the comeback role of a lifetime: to play the famed female pilot Marian Graves in a biopic. From the first pages of the script, she feels an instant connection with Marian, a woman who refused to be bound by gravity or any of the other strictures of her time. After filming is complete, her bond grows stronger as she begins to question whether the Great Marian Graves really did die at all.

Biografía del autor

Maggie Shipstead es la autora superventas de las novelas "Seating Arrangements" y "Astonish Me". "El gran círculo", inspirada en la vida de la aviadora Amelia Earhart, es su tercera novela. Ha sido galardonada con el premio Dylan Thomas y el premio del "L.A. Times" a la Primera Obra de Ficción. Se graduó en el Programa de Escritura Creativa de Iowa, ha disfrutado de la beca Wallace Stegner en Stanford, y también ha recibido el apoyo económico del programa nacional estadounidense para el fomento del arte. "El gran círculo" ha sido finalista del premio Booker 2021.<br> <br> Sus textos han aparecido en numerosas publicaciones, incluidos el "The New York Times", el "The Washington Post", "The Guardian", el "Wall Street Journal", "Travel + Leisure", "Departures", "Condé Nast Traveler", "Outside", "The Best American Short Stories" y "The Best American Sports Writing". Vive en Los Ángeles.