{"id":1049,"date":"2013-03-23T12:38:53","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T19:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2013-04-04T09:20:45","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T16:20:45","slug":"so-you-thought-you-knew-the-lindbergh-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=1049","title":{"rendered":"So you thought you knew the Lindbergh story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Redemption is sweet. For three years, I\u2019ve had a novel by Melanie Benjamin on my office worktable and on my conscience.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I loved her book Alice I Have Been<\/em>, about the real Alice whom Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) wrote about in Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em>.\u00a0 But I read it at an in-between time in my book-reviewing life, during the transition when the Winston-Salem Journal<\/em> stopped running locally written reviews of books for adults, and I was just getting this blog up and running. So the book slipped through the cracks, and I never reviewed it.<\/p>\n

Now, however, I\u2019ve just finished Benjamin\u2019s latest historical novel, so I have a natural opportunity when reviewing The Aviator\u2019s Wife<\/em> to praise the previous book as well.<\/p>\n

In Alice I Have Been<\/em>, Benjamin deftly weaves a fascinating story drawing on the considerable information that is known about Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson. She deals with, among other things, the idea that Dodgson\u2019s obsession with young girls was far from healthy. At the very least, the real Alice\u2019s family misunderstood the relationship, and their belated attempts to deal with it contributed to problems Alice dealt with most of her life.<\/p>\n

This is the well-told, well-imagined story of a real girl who had to grow up, who could not live forever in a magical Wonderland. And her real world, as Victorian England with all its supposed absolutes gave way to the uncertainties of war and its aftermath, was often trying. It was a world that many women of spirit and intelligence found difficult to navigate, and Alice, who struggled with the clash of fiction and reality most of her life, found the going especially tough.<\/p>\n

Benjamin followed her Alice novel with another historical novel based on a real person, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb<\/em>. That book never made its way into my reviewing stack, so I have no guilt associated with it. Having now read Benjamin\u2019s two other historical novels, however, I\u2019ll have to track that one down.<\/p>\n

By Linda C. Brinson<\/p>\n

THE AVIATOR\u2019S WIFE. By Melanie Benjamin. Delacorte Press. 403 pages. $26.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Lindbergh story is a part of our American culture. We\u2019ve read about the young aviator\u2019s solo flight across the Atlantic, maybe even seen the old movie about it, starring Jimmy Stewart. We\u2019ve seen the remarkably small, fragile looking plane hanging in the Smithsonian in Washington.<\/p>\n

We know the Lindbergh\u2019s baby was kidnapped and found dead, and that there was a trial and an execution. We\u2019ve heard about Anne Morrow Lindbergh\u2019s book Gift From the Sea<\/em>, even if we haven\u2019t actually read it.<\/p>\n

We probably also know, at least vaguely, that Charles Lindbergh associated with Hitler before World War II, opposed American entry into the war and maybe even was a Nazi sympathizer.<\/p>\n

And we may remember stories from more recent years about Lindbergh\u2019s infidelities later in his marriage and reports of his illegitimate children in Germany.<\/p>\n

From those basic outlines of the Lindbergh story, with extensive research into the writings of both Charles and Anne Lindbergh, biographies and other historical documents, Melanie Benjamin has crafted a fascinating novel about an iconic marriage and, especially, the woman who fell in love with the nation\u2019s hero.<\/p>\n

There is so much in this book: The story is rich with romance, adventure and tragedy. And, as she tells the story in Anne\u2019s voice, Benjamin also offers fascinating insights into a 20th<\/sup>-century woman\u2019s struggles to sort through life\u2019s claims on her. She was the ambassador\u2019s daughter, the hero\u2019s wife, the aviator\u2019s \u201ccrew\u201d and the dead baby\u2019s bereaved mother. She also was the woman who, more often than not alone, raised five lively children. And, as she long thought of herself and eventually became, she was a writer.<\/p>\n

Who, in the midst of all these roles, all these demands, was Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and what was really important to her? The reader watches, sympathetically, as Anne slowly becomes aware of these questions and, eventually, the answers to them.<\/p>\n

Anne Morrow was a shy college girl, feeling inferior to her pretty older sister, when the young hero took notice of her.\u00a0 She longed for a hero who would whisk her away into his dramatic life. She got what she wished for and much more. Charles was enigmatic, moody and demanding, expecting her to be his student and flying partner as well as what he considered an appropriate mother for his children. \u00a0He was driven, a hero pursuing missions, rarely able to relax and be simply a man, a husband, a father.<\/p>\n

And from the moment their engagement was announced, the couple had to deal with suffocatingly adoring crowds and a dangerously determined press corps. Privacy was next to impossible; Charles always blamed the press, which revealed the location of their home, for the baby\u2019s kidnapping. They were America\u2019s version of royalty, and they paid the price of fame much as Princess Diana later did in England.<\/p>\n

In this, her third historical novel, Benjamin does another fine job of turning a historical figure into a living, breathing woman with hopes, disappointments and emotions.\u00a0 She says in an author\u2019s note that she\u2019s gratified when readers are inspired by her fictions to delve more deeply into the historical records, and she offers a list of her sources. While she\u2019s stayed as close to the \u201ctruth\u201d of history as a good novel allows, Benjamin is offering another sort of truth that\u2019s better understood through fiction, the kind that\u2019s kept in the heart.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Redemption is sweet. For three years, I\u2019ve had a novel by Melanie Benjamin on my office worktable and on my conscience. I loved her book Alice I Have Been, about the real Alice whom Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) wrote about in Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland.\u00a0 But I read it at an in-between time in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[411,101,412,413],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-fiction","tag-anne-morrow-lindbergh","tag-historical-fiction-2","tag-lindbergh","tag-melanie-benjamin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1322,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/1322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}