Novelist Maggie Shipstead talks about the feral bootlegging, Alaska bush, and Air Transport Auxiliary pilot character, Marion Graves, from her best selling Great Circle.

Send us a text

In this interview with author Maggie Shipstead, we discuss her best-selling novel Great Circle. In this sweeping saga, we follow fictional pilot Marion Graves from her feral childhood in Montana where she first encounters a barnstorming pilot team and decides that flying is her life's purpose. She flies as a bootlegger transporting liquor, the flies as a bush pilot in Alaska before joining the Air Transport Auxiliary to fly during the war. Post-war, she decides to fly around the world, North to South, and disappears. The story is intercut with a modern day Hollywood actress set to play Marion in an upcoming bio-pic whose own childhood scars include the loss of her parents in a small airplane crash. Maggie talks about the inspiration for the book and the research that led to this gorgeous novel. 

Correction from the end of the interview: we will discuss the book Aviatrix, by Mary Bush Shipko, in the Aviatrix Book Club next month, and THEN we'll read The Fabulous Flying Mrs. Miller in July.

Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and me by shopping through my Bookshop.org affiliate links on my website? If a book is available on Bookshop.org, you'll find a link to it on the book page. By shopping through the Literary Aviatrix website a small portion of the sale goes to support the content you love, at no additional cost to you. https://literaryaviatrix.com/shop-all-books/

Thanks so much for listening!

• Stay up to date on book releases, author events, and Aviatrix Book Club discussion dates with the Literary Aviatrix Newsletter.
• Visit the Literary Aviatrix website to find over 600 books featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages.
• Become a Literary Aviatrix Patron and help amplify the voices of women in aviation.
• Follow me on social media, join the book club, and find all of the things on the Literary Aviatrix linkt.ree.

Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!

-Liz Booker