Last Flight

The great aviatrix in her own words. Well, almost. G.P. Putnam puts a twist in it and hints at the answer to everyones' question by naming the book after Howard Hughs' expositional movie of the True Story. The U.S. government had promised since 1938 to declassify the AE file in 1999 but more than ten years after that date the file remains labelled, "Eyes Only." This book is like a window into the Soul of Amelia. Anyone interested in finding out what really happened to her, however, should find the RKO Radio Pictures film of the same name, starring Rosalind Russell as Amelia and Fred My-Three-Sons MacMurray as Fred Noonan. Good luck, though, since so much classified information was revealed in the movie that only a few subterranean copies still exist.

In all of the guessing and all of the opinions about AE, her goals and her loss, I'm thankful the this pilot was a fine writer so we can see how she felt things developed. As a writer with some experience in aviation history as applied to women, I realize both the process her actual words went through to get on the page and the fact that her husband had a great deal of impact on the outcome of her last book. Still, "Last Flight" is in keeping with material published before her death, when she did have more control over the process. "Last Flight" gives each one of us the opportunity to make our own decision about her life and her end.

Man, this book rocked out. Like, Amelia Earhart was da bomb. Man, when she died, that was like, so bush. You know, I bet she's still alive somewhere, man. Like on some pacific island somewhere just chillin with the natives, sippin on a drink, yeah boy! She be bumpin' with some hot guy. Yeah.