FLYING AGAINST THE WIND

An entry in the Creative Minds series presents an enticing view of aviator and writer Beryl Markham. Brought up in British East Africa in the early 1900s, the girl Bowen reveals had free rein to pursue her tomboyish interests on her father’s farm, where he trained racehorses. The story takes readers through her marriages and her adventurous lifestyle, to her acquaintance with the new invention, airplanes. Bowen enhances this abbreviated version of Markham’s life with quotations from her contemporaries; when it appears, Markham’s own writing also reinforces the storytelling. The book builds to an exciting crossing of the Atlantic in 1936, and closes with an afterword. Black-and-white watercolors convey only mild sense of the subject’s appearance, offering more in the way of atmospherics than facts. This is a capable introduction to a captivating achiever. (bibliography, index) (Biography. 7-11)