"Great Circle is pure literary magic. It is the story of Marian Graves, a pilot who disappears, along with her navigator, while attempting to fly around the world from north to south, through both poles—a great circle. It spans a century of her life and legacy, taking readers from a ship in the middle of the Atlantic to Montana, Alaska, wartime London, and beyond. Every page, every character, every digression in this extraordinary novel is part of a circle that will close by the final page, creating a mosaic of 20th-century American womanhood, ambition, desire, and the simple, powerful pull of the open sky."
Publisher Knopf
Publication Date 2021-05-04
Section New Hardcover - Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9780525656975
“Great Circle is a masterpiece . . . one of the best books I’ve ever read” —J. Courtney Sullivan
"A breathtaking epic . . . This is a stunning feat." —Publishers Weekly
Shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, #1 IndieNext Pick
*A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 according to O, The Oprah Magazine; Lit Hub; She Reads; Town & Country; Esquire; and Bustle*
An unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost—Great Circle spans 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. There—after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes—Marian 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 Marian's 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 Marian's own story, as the two women's fates—and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times—collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.
