Book Love: Flight Girls by Noelle Salazar

Here I am writing about TWO fiction books in a row!  I was going to say that's more fiction books than I wrote about all last year (in their own post) but then I went back and counted.  I had 7 posts on fiction although 4 of those were on series I had read previously so only 3 fiction books immediately struck me as "I should write about this."  Two of those were in January and February, just like this year.  SOO...this might be about it for the fiction I recommend this year.  WE WILL SEE.

The Flight Girls by Noelle Salazar, I believe, came to me (not physically, as you can see I got it from the library) because I saw someone else post about it on Goodreads.  I thought "that looks interesting" and "I haven't read any World War II set books in...a couple months" so I clicked through to learn more about it.  Then I saw that the book opens in Hawaii, in the fall of 1941 and I was ALL IN. Pearl Harbor is honestly one of my favorite movies (top 10 at least) and I rewatch it again every December.  I was very interested in a book about female pilots, especially at Pearl Harbor.  So I added it to my TBR list and forgot all about it until I was planning my January reading.

The Flight Girls follows Audrey who, as the book opens in Hawaii, is helping train military pilots for battle.  She can't join the military, being a woman in 1941, but she is a skilled pilot and is allowed to help train them.  She grew up in Texas where her father made his money in oil and introduced her to flying.  She was immediately hooked and wanted to fly herself when she was old enough.  Much to the chagrin of her proper society mother, Audrey learned to fly and her biggest dream is to own the small airfield where she herself learned.  She thinks she will be perfectly happy running her airfield and isn't looking for a man or relationship.  She just wants to fly.

In Hawaii, Audrey lives with 3 other women pilots but happens to be the only one of them in the air in the early morning of December 7th, 1941.  And being in the air, as the Japanese are attacking by air, might be what save her life.  After witnessing the horrors of the attack, she goes back home to Texas and her family, still wanting to fly but deeply affected by what she saw in Hawaii. 

Eventually she is able to fly again and joins the WASPs, Women Airforce Service Pilots.  The women are trained together on a military base.  They will not be seeing battle but they are trained in a variety of military planes, with the intent of having them shuttle planes around the US so the planes can head into battle in the Pacific or European theaters.  These women are highly skilled and will never leave the States, but they are an integral part of helping the war effort.

As part of her training, Audrey is bunking with a group of 8-10 women who bond over their struggles and the losses they share as part of flying regularly.  The struggle through some of their classes (navigation, swimming, math, etc.) and help each other out.  There is a real sense of camaraderie among the women and they rely on each other a lot to get through training. 

Once they have graduated from training, they are all dispatched around the country to help the war effort in various ways.  Even though they are not seeing battle, this is still a taxing life.  They all know men who are fighting or have already lost their lives to the war effort.  Audrey's beau from Hawaii has been sent overseas and she gets anxious waiting for his letters, not knowing if he doesn't have time to write or if he's dead.  All the while she just dreams of buying her airfield back home in Texas.  It's all she's ever wanted but now there is a man too and how might there dreams fit together?

I've read many books set during World War II and almost every time I am amazed at what these people did and the strength they had to keep going.  While Audrey didn't see battle, she was still making sacrifices for the war effort.  I loved how she was determined to do her part and also how she shed light on the many real life WASPs who did what she was fictionally doing.

This in parts reminded me of Beyond the Point, mainly for focusing on female friendships and being military related, although that book starts just before 9/11 while this one is just before Pearl Harbor.  I know there are a plethora of books set during World War II but this one really stood out to me as one of my favorites of all the ones I've read.  Audrey was very relatable and she demonstrated the enduring human spirit while in some very tough circumstances.  And it was a slightly lighter take than some other books I've read, seeing as she was State-side and didn't see much of the horror first hand.  I really rooted for her and admired her spirit.

If you haven't gotten fatigue from all the World War II books, I'd highly recommend this one, especially if you are interested in female friendships and women taking control of their own lives.   I really enjoyed it and was a little sad when my time with Audrey came to an end.

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