Any initial apprehension about the sheer volume of pages soon gave way to a sense of enjoyment that it would continue to entertain me for many more pages to come and not leave me wanting in the way that shorter narratives sometimes do.

Great Circle feels, to me, like one of those books that you feel glad to keep reading. After filming is complete, her bond grows stronger as she begins to question whether the Great Marian Graves really did die at all. 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. 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. 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. Shortly before completing the journey, her plane disappears, lost to history. 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. 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. Watching them roll, dive, and loop in their mini plane, she can think of nothing else but flying. When a pair of aerobats take their exhilarating show to a nearby airfield, Marian’s life is changed forever. Marian and Jamie grow up roaming Montana forests, more comfortable with landscape than with people. Buy this book from or .uk to support The Reading Agency and local bookshops at no additional cost to you.įrom 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.

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead