The Flying Circus (38 page)
Authors: Susan Crandall
Acknowledgments
I
owe a debt of gratitude to many for their assistance in the creation of this novel. It might not take a village to create a book, but it does take a team. First and foremost, thanks to my patient husband, Bill, for accepting my mental absences on the days I did not “come home” from 1923; and to my family for their endless support.
I have been extraordinarily lucky to have had my fabulous editor, Karen Kosztolnyik, as a partner on yet another book. This is our eleventh collaboration and I hope we will have at least eleven more. Your critical eye and sharp insight, as well as your friendship, make my writing life so much richer.
Working with the team at Gallery Books is a writer’s dream. Thanks to all whose hands have touched this project, especially Jen Bergstrom and Louise Burke, who both believed in this book even before it was a fully formed idea in my head.
Thanks to my critique partners, Wendy Wax and Karen White, for keeping me on the rails. I’m so incredibly fortunate to have such talented writers to share in my creative process. It was great fun going through the frenzy of three simultaneous deadlines. Hope we get to do it again . . . it really kept me in the zone.
My father, Vic Zinn, was a private pilot who preferred flying low and slow with the wind in his face. I had the wonderful experience of flying with him in several different aircraft. Although my knowledge was rudimentary, as a teen I learned about tail draggers and tricycle gear, ailerons, elevators and rudder, trim tab and air speed. Of particular help in creating this book were our flights in a tandem-cockpit Piper J-3 Cub with the door open—closest I’ve come to flying in an open cockpit. To this day I’m sorry I disappointed him by being his only child who never learned to fly. (Congratulations to Tom and Sally for fulfilling his dream.) I also was lucky enough to have gone to the amazing Oshkosh Fly-In with him multiple times, where I was able to get up close and personal with old warbirds and the pilots who love them. Dad’s been gone for many years, but I’ll never forget his love of flying and machinery—and his ability to create the functional from scavenged pieces and parts. These experiences gave me invaluable insight into Henry’s character.
Because my knowledge of flying and aircraft is so pitifully limited, I reached out to several pilots, who were kind enough to fill in the many blanks. Thanks to my nephew Bryan Zinn for your speedy and detailed replies and not ever laughing at my questions. Larry Jacobi was kind enough to let me crawl all over his vintage Stearman biplane and answer an evening full of questions. And a special thanks to Brian Karli, who lovingly restored a “Jenny” (Curtiss JN-4) and shared all of the finer details of the craft so that my depiction may be as accurate as possible. I am indebted to you all. Any aeronautical errors in this book are mine alone.
My depiction of life in 1923 was fueled by hours of enlightening research and complimented by conversations with my mother, Marge Beaver Zinn, who shared what she recalled from her parents’, aunts’, and uncles’ stories. I am so lucky to have you in my life.
A few historical disclaimers need to be mentioned: The January air race in Miami and the December aerobatic competition and air race at Clover Field are fictional. Such air meets were quite popular in the twenties. Some were short sprints, as I’ve described; some were long distance. In those early days, they were frequently deadly. Clover Field and Douglas Aircraft were in Santa Monica in 1923. Cliff Henderson did have a Nash dealership in Santa Monica and, according to my research, did offer an airplane ride with the purchase of a new car. I have no idea how many takers he had. He did also organize a stunt team called the Black Falcons, who performed regularly at Clover Field.
While the silent film
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
was released in 1923, it did not play at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre that year.
I made a concerted effort to keep my story framed by historical fact. Belle’s supper club was inspired by an establishment of family lore and was definitely not located in Williamson County, Illinois.
This is a work of fiction, filled with fictional characters. Please forgive any literary license employed in the telling of this tale.
Gallery Readers Group Guide
The Flying Circus
Susan Crandall
Mercury’s Daredevils is a group of disparate characters who come together to perform as high-flying stunt pilots—known as barnstormers—traveling across the American Midwest in the 1920s. The group is comprised of Henry “Schuler” Jefferson, the newly orphaned son of German immigrants; Cora Rose Haviland, a bold young woman from a once-prestigious family; Charles “Gil” Gilchrist, a troubled WWI veteran pilot; and Mercury himself, a scrappy mutt who enjoys riding in motorcycles almost as much as he relishes stealing food.
Circumstances bring Henry, Cora, and Gil together, and shared ambitions help to solidify their bond. They form a makeshift family as they crisscross America’s heartland, drawing increasingly larger crowds with their death-defying airborne acrobatics. But each of them hides a complicated past that could jeopardize their relationship, and, as time goes on, they realize that telling the truth may pose the most dangerous risk of all.
1. We know from the opening chapter of
The Flying Circus
that Henry has been accused of a crime, but Crandall doesn’t reveal the facts about Emmaline’s murder until much later in the story. How did your impression of Henry evolve as you discovered more about his backstory? Did your feelings about his guilt or innocence change at any time?
2. What does flying mean to Henry, Cora, and Gil respectively? What does it help them achieve—or escape from?
3. Crandall writes,
“Gil’s acknowledgment that [Cora] was every bit as much a daredevil as he was coming hard and slow. Henry thought perhaps it was compounded because their motivations for taking life in hand were so different.”
Discuss the nature of Gil and Cora’s risk-taking. What drives them to perform stunts, and how do their motivations evolve over the course of the novel?
4. One of the major themes of
The Flying Circus
is the balance between bravery and vulnerability, and how these two characteristics are often two sides of the same coin. Discuss how Henry, Cora, and Gil exhibit both qualities over the course of the novel. Ultimately, which character do you think is the most courageous?
5. While Henry urges Gil to open up about his experiences in WWI, ultimately he’s not sure if talking is actually therapeutic. “Henry had been prepared for the horror,” Crandall writes.
“He hadn’t been prepared for the rush of shame he felt for pushing Gil into painful memories; shame and sympathy.”
What is your take on Gil’s reticence? What do you think the novel has to say about PTSD in general?
6. WWI casts a long shadow over
The Flying Circus,
but the novel addresses prohibition, women’s rights, and civil rights as well. How does historical context influence the course of events in
The Flying Circus
? How would Henry, Cora, and Gil be different if they lived in contemporary America?
7. The complicated dynamic between Cora, Henry, and Gil drives much of the tension in the novel. In your opinion, what draws Henry and Gil to Cora, and vice versa? Do you think that Gil and Cora might have made a good match?
8. Why do you think Crandall decided to tell the story from Henry’s point of view? How would
The Flying Circus
be different if Gil or Cora had narrated the story?
9. Crandall writes,
“Gil’s permanent absence proved to be more of a wall between them than his presence had ever been.”
Why does Cora pull away from Henry after Gil’s death? Would you have reacted in the same way?
10. Do you think Gil committed suicide, or was the crash an accident? Why or why not?
11. Crandall writes,
“It was a blessing that Gil hadn’t lived to see his beloved free-flying aircraft bound by so many restrictions.”
Do you think that the antics of barnstormers were reckless? Did
The Flying Circus
impact how you view aviation?
12. Why do you think Crandall chose the William Butler Yeats poem as the novel’s epigraph? Did its meaning change for you after you had finished reading
The Flying Circus
?
1. Has your book group read other historical novels? How did
The Flying Circus
compare?
2. Watch a classic movie about barnstorming with your book club (i.e.
Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies
or
The Great Waldo Pepper).
Compare and contrast the film’s portrayal of aviation with that of
The Flying Circus.
3. Gil’s struggle with PTSD still is, unfortunately, a serious problem for today’s war veterans. Visit a site like
http://www.uso.org
to learn ways to support troops coming home from combat.
4. Learn more about the author by visiting her website (
http://susancrandall.net/
), and by following her on Twitter (
@susancrandall
) and Facebook (
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSusanCrandall
).
What was your inspiration for writing
The Flying Circus?
The first thing I was seeking when setting out on developing this story was a time in history when our country was in the throes of change, much as in the 1963 setting for
Whistling Past the Graveyard.
After much research I found my way to the 1920s. So many things were in transition: the emergence of the middle class, women’s rights, the fallout from the Great War, Hollywood movies, mass media and its influence on the development of our first youth culture. We had ceased to be isolationists in both our private and national lives. And, of course, there was the fascination with aviation.
My dad was a flier (private pilot, an active member in Experimental Aircraft Association, built airplanes in our little garage and actually flew them). So I had some experience flying—and living with a man who loved machines and the sky. The passion I witnessed fueled the beginnings of Henry Schuler.
What sort of research did you do to write the novel?
With this story, I didn’t have the benefit of my own childhood memories of the time period, so the research was much more extensive than for any book I’ve undertaken. Of course I relied upon books and old periodicals and research on the war, Hollywood, social issues, news headlines, aviation, attitudes, fashion, daily life and all. I probed my mother for stories that her parents and aunts and uncles had shared of that time period. I reached out to the pilots I know (unfortunately my father passed in 1989—if only I’d had him as a resource!) to help fill in my aviation knowledge gaps. And the crown jewel of my research was the discovery of a man who’d actually restored a Curtiss JN-4, “Jenny.” He was instrumental in helping me understand the machine, as well as fill in the small details of the craft that fleshed out the flying experience.
Barnstormers and flying circuses both brought excitement to small towns and cities all across this country. It was a brief and colorful moment in history, lasting barely ten years before regulations changed the aviation landscape.
Which character was the most fun to write? Which was the most challenging for you?
The fun factor is always high with canine characters, so Mercury was a joy—even with his nonexistent dialog. I loved writing Cora from Henry’s point of view, how he saw her in the context of what he knew about the “fairer sex” and the lessons he learned about life from her very different socio-economic background.
Gil was the most difficult character for me to write, not in terms of the actual writing but in crawling inside his tortured soul. People who carry the kinds of emotional burdens Gil does always make for a heartbreaking journey as a writer.
The novel’s epilogue is set decades after the final chapter. How do you envision Henry and Cora’s life unfolding in the intervening years?
Oh, I think Henry and Cora experienced extraordinary lives, even for the changing times in which they lived. I doubt that all days were sailed on calm (or even calm-ish) seas, but neither of them would be happy and fulfilled in calm, ordinary lives. Adventure brought them together and adventure would see them through their days.
Like
The Flying Circus,
your previous novel,
Whistling Past the Graveyard,
depicts characters who are on the run, so to speak (in that case, two unlikely friends on a road trip through the 1960s South). What attracts you to characters who have left their daily lives behind?
Maybe I’m just living vicariously, because I’m a real homebody.
More seriously, I love writing about people who are searching for their place in the world, and knocking them out of familiar surroundings is a great way to kickstart change. I think once you’re out of your “natural habitat” you’re forced to look at yourself (and the world around you) in a much different context.