When you think “female aviator”—or “aviatrix,” as they are sometimes called, a delicious descriptor if ever one existed—chances are Amelia Earhart comes to mind. The dearth of well-known women pilots charging through gender barriers and stultifying period restrictions doesn’t mean they didn’t exist, but simply that so few of them were well-known.
Fiction can show us lives and worlds that don’t exist, or that we have no access to. History can help us understand our world. Biographies can help us understand the people in it. But many books are written at a remove—no matter how well-researched or how well-written, the author didn’t actually experience what they’re writing […]