Ok...let’s try a book review...I haven’t tried that yet.

Riders of the Wind was written by Robert F DeBurgh. He has written an engaging book about early aviation, from 1920’s to 1940. The book was given to me by a close friend and it languished in the guest bedroom up at the lake house for over a year. At a recent family reunion he asked me how I enjoyed the book. With some degree of embarrassment I had to admit that I hadn’t read it yet...”but I will before next year’s reunion!”

And I have.

With summer’s heat slowly breaking, replaced by a low pressure area off the Texas coast, bringing low ceilings (the clouds hanging in the tree tops) and gentle rains that dripped off the boat house dock, I finally picked up the book.

While historically a blend of fact and fiction it had potential, however, started off ever so slowly. Charlie Cross is our main character, who taught himself to fly on his father’s farm in New Jersey. Now as a lifelong pilot I found that a little hard to believe (remembering my early experiences...with an instructor no less!). Anyway he did (in the book) and the story goes on through his career, marriage and starting an airline that somehow survived the Depression and ends as WWII erupts.

Flying a dizzying array of aircraft I was constantly “Googling” them to get a better feel for what he was flying.

Mixing real and imaginary people (he marries a cousin of Anne Morrow...Charles Lindberg’s wife), the book explores the early airmail and airline days. Charlie and Doretta emerge as early pioneers in aviation, he starting the airline, she an early pilot starting a flight school and rising to Captain in Charlie’s airline. As if this wasn’t enough they are enticed to do early route exploration work in Brazil...this is one of the best parts!

All is going well, Charlie and Doretta’s businesses grow, she constantly pushing the boundaries of women in aviation until the depression hits...their survivors and they gather all their employees around them into an extended family and suffer the pains and joys of an extended family.

And then the war arrives!

Winds of Fire is the sequel, and I’ve ordered it, and it will cover the war years up into the 1960’s.

Give it a try (especially if you like aviation) you’ll enjoy it!