Flying Free: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

Judy Hamen was born in a hospital in South Dakota just before the start of World War II, when gas was eleven cents a gallon and the average life expectancy for a woman was sixty-five. As she grew into an energetic five-year-old, Judy had no idea that just days before her sixth birthday, she would become motherless--an event that would change the course of her life forever.

In her poignant memoir, Hamen details what it was like to grow up without a mother during a chaotic time in American his...