Review: Glory Girl by Peter Yeldham

' " I suppose it's the idea of being the first woman to fly all the way across the world. I mean, even as his passenger I'd be remembered for that. My one possibility of fame, or whatever you want to call it."

"A chance of glory" Lucy suggested, and Sarah wondered if it was meant in ridicule. But however it was intended, she made use of the remark.
"Yes, that's what it could mean for me. For your husband, it'd be far more. He'd be making aviation history".'


London, 1927 - former WWI flying ace James Harrington has his sights set on being the first person to fly from Britain to Australia in a light aircraft. With so much desert and ocean to cross he's been told it can't be done.
Feisty Australian Sarah Carson can help make his dream a reality, but only on the condition that he takes her with him. So begins the flying adventure of a lifetime.


Glory Girl is part fiction and part fact. The characters of James and Sarah are based on the real life Bill Lancaster and Jessie 'Chubbie' Miller and their exploits in the air and on the ground.



Bill Lancaster and Chubbie Miller

Reporting on it all back home is Sarah's Australian boyfriend, Fleet Street aviation correspondent Daniel Anderson whose job it is to keep the couple in the headlines. A purely fictional character he's also an ex-WWI pilot and a man who, in a time when the skies were the new frontier to conquer, has a clear vision of what the future will be particularly for Australia.

"This country is ideally made for the new era of aviation. One day in the near future it will be transporting people between country towns here, and even interstate.....What will follow is the kind of aircraft that can make the journey to Asia, and inevitably after that will evolve larger and faster planes that can fly to Europe and America."

His work also takes him to other places.............he finds himself in trouble in Italy for ridiculing Il Duce and he's among the crowds listening to that 'loony little man' in Berlin.

It's a story of adventure, romance , the history of aviation, and a glimpse at the fascinating period of the Jazz Age years preceding WWII.

Great reading - I enjoyed it immensely.

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Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Penguin, Australia, 2010
384p