608 pages |Paperback

Great Circleis a masterpieceone of the best books Ive ever read
J. Courtney Sullivan

An unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any costGreat Circlespans Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles.

After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. Thereafter encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanesMarian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles.

A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marians disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marians own story, as the two womens fatesand their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and timescollide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told,Great Circleis a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.