In a fictional debut inspired by the early career of pioneer aviatrix Harriet Quimby, journalist Leefeldt (In Search of Paper Children) concocts an entirely new biography for his heroine, telling the lively if simplistic story of a magnificent woman and her flying machine. Leefeldt reinvents Quimby as Tennessee farm girl Mary Ann Pitman, spurned by her neighbors for assisting her father in experiments using the new combustible engine to power a heavier-than-air flying "contraption." Mary Ann is discovered by hard-drinking Harding Cooper, who accompanies her first to New York in 1901 to meet their wealthy sponsor, Neville Bishop, and then to Paris to compete for the prize of a million francs offered by industrialist Henri Meurthe to the first person to circle the Eiffel Tower by air. Mary Ann's French competitor is dashing, irreverent Alain Chevrier, and the German pilot is ne'er-do-well Maximilian von Hohenstauffen, a military attaché whose desire to win doesn't preclude murder. While preparing for the contest, Harding is drawn to Mary Ann, Mary Ann to Chevrier and Chevrier to Meurthe's daughter. Leefeldt describes turn-of-the-century Paris with bright clichés that lack the precision and individuality he brings to his descriptions of flying machines. As a result, Mary Ann's contraption with wings, von Hohenstauffen's dirigible and Chevrier's bicycle-plane are finely drawn creations while the protagonists who fly them border on caricatures. Although Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Leefeldt sputters with the intricacies of character and plot, he pilots deftly through uplifting descriptions of men—and women—learning to fly in the dawn of the aviation age. Author tour. (Nov.)
