A riveting, adventurous novel inspired by the life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation and found freedom in the air
A few years after the Wright brothers- first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton ?elds with her family when an airplane flew over their heads. It buzzed so low she thought she could catch it in her hands. Bessie was fearless. She knew there was freedom in those wings.
The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the Great Migration. She moves to Chicago, where she wins the backing of two wealthy, powerful Black men-Robert Abbott, creator and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, the founder of Chicago-s first Black bank. Abbott becomes her mentor, while Binga becomes her lover. Her true first love, though, remains flying.
But in 1920, no one in the United States will train a Black woman to fly. So, twenty-eight-year-old Bessie learn
