Up in the Air: An Aviator's Wife's Story of Early Days of Commercial Aviation from 1924 to 1938

152 pp. Black-and-white photographs follow text. It begins with a honeymoon by air which ended on a Coast Range mountain top where the couple were forced to walk out. It includes years of 'barnstorming' up and down the coast, of flying for Ryan Airlines before Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis was built, of pioneering Forest Patrol and aerial surveying and flying the embryo Pan-American Airlines over the Carribean. Alaskan years covered beginning of air mail down the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers, activities of the 'bush pilots,' meeting with the Lindberghs, Will Rogers and Wiley Post. The author describes her experience learning to fly and obtaining a license as the first woman pilot both trained and licensed in Alaska. From its start in the day of landing on cow pastures in an old World War I surplus 'Jenny' the story concludes with watching her husband take off as captain in command of the Pan American China Clipper bound for the Orient.--back cover