Beyond Amelia by Heather Stemp

Beyond Amelia is the third book in the Ginny Ross Series. It is August 1940 and Ginny finds herself alone at Purdue University Airport. Her best friends Jamie and Jack, boyfriend Matt, have enlisted and are at Lowry Field in Colorado. Her friend Mabel has a job as the assistant manager of food services at Langley Air Base in Virginia. They all hope to end up in the same base.

Ginny is feeling left behind. Like her friends, she too wants to help stop Hitler from invading Britain. But the US Army Air Corps doesn't accept female pilots. Cap Aretz, her flying instructor, tells Ginny he has a job for her, dusting crops.

At the home of Professor and Mrs. Abernathy, where Ginny rents out their spare bedroom, she tells them about Cap's offer. It will help because her family back in Newfoundland is struggling. Her father only has part time work in Toronto and can't send money home, so her mother and younger brother Billy are just getting by. Ginny receives a short letter from Matt that offers few details about his posting.

The next day Ginny and another pilot, Frank Bracken dust crops at two nearby farms. They continue this work throughout August, earning more flying hours. In late August, Cap informs Frank about  the Clayton Knight Committee's search for experienced pilots to fly bombers to Britain. The pilots need to be instrument rated with three hundred hours of logged flying. The pay is substantial: five hundred dollars for an aircraft captain, four hundred dollars for copilots and three hundred for radio operators. While both Frank and Ginny have the requirements, Cap tells her it's "Men only."

Undeterred by this, Ginny formulates a plan. She approaches Mrs. Abernathy telling her she wants to look like a boy so she can fly for the military. At first Clara Abernathy refuses to agree and becomes upset, telling Ginny it's too dangerous, that she could crash or be caught. When her husband, Charles returns home and learns of Ginny's plan, initially he too is shocked. Ginny explains how her plan might succeed: she looks like her brother Billy and that with a haircut and some of the Professor's old clothing it could work. She would also need to change her name to Jimmy Ross which would require the Abernathy's to readdress her letters, so that her family didn't know what she was doing. She would also need to open a bank account so she could send money to her family. 

The next morning the Abernathy's agree to help Ginny. And they also decide to hide this plan from their housekeeper, Mildred, who likes to talk!  Cap also decides to help Ginny. And in a stroke of luck, Frank Bracken's wife refuses to allow him to go to Canada to fly bombers. Over the following three weeks, Clara alters her husband's suit and clothing to fit Ginny. Cap teachers her how to walk like a man and how to defend herself. With her new identity and a plan in place, Ginny, now Jimmy Ross, sets out for Montreal, Canada and the adventure of a lifetime.

Discussion

Heather Stemp uses the real life event of the RAF Ferry Operation initiated by Britain in 1940, to bring Hudson bombers to the country in the fight against Nazi Germany. The novel covers the period from November 1940 to February 1941. 

As Ginny Ross does in Beyond Amelia, there are many records of women disguising themselves as men to participate in war as soldiers. It's possible that up to one thousand women fought as soldiers in the American Civil War. Others fought in the Revolutionary War or the American-Mexican war.  

In the novel, Ginny disguised at Jimmy meets Jacqueline (Jackie) Cochran who discovers her secret. Jackie Cochran was a real female pilot and friend of Amelia Earhart. She was a well known pilot who had won several airplane races and had set several speed records. Jackie was considered the best woman pilot in the United States by 1938. Jackie was the first woman to fly a bomber, the American built Lockheed Hudson V, across the Atlantic Ocean. Jackie reached out to Eleanor Roosevelt in 1939 to propose that the Army Air Force create a women's pilot division. These women pilots could take on the non-military flights, freeing up men for combat flights. Eventually the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squad was created in 1942 headed by Nancy Harkness Love. It should be noted that the only country in which women flew combat missions was the Soviet Union. They became known as the "Night Witches".

Ginny is motivated to disguise herself as a male pilot by her desire to both help Britain fight Hitler and also support her struggling family during the end of the Depression. She also keenly feels the injustice of having the same qualifications of pilots like Frank Bracken, yet being disqualified because she's a woman. However, what seems to be a workable plan soon reveals to Ginny that the risks she's taking are enormous and could have serious consequences.

Most of the tension in the novel centers around one the risk of Jimmy's true identity being discovered. It is one of the men, Wright who senses that there is something different about "Jimmy" and he becomes obsessed with finding out what that something is. This sets up a sort of "cat and mouse" game between Wright and Jimmy, as Wright moves from making sarcastic remarks to watching Jimmy's every move. Ginny's cover is almost blown when Matt Baker shows up at Newfoundland Airport. He warns her that it's only a matter of time before she's discovered. "I saw danger in flying the North Atlantic in the winter, but I didn't see danger in the men around me. Was I being naïve?" 

Stemp builds the backstory as to why Wright is focused on Jimmy. It's evident that he resents Jimmy was made co-pilot when he's only eighteen years old. After one too many drinks, Wright reveals that he is struggling with resentment and jealousy over his overachieving younger brother who is at West Point. To compensate, he's lied to his parents about being a pilot in the ferry service. 

When the Hudson she's crewing crashes at the Newfoundland Airport, Jimmy reveals his true identity to Joan Parsons and her mother. This leads to a set up with Joan becoming Jimmy's girlfriend, but even that doesn't stall Wright. Eventually the situation between Jimmy and Wright escalates to the point that he grabs Jimmy and tries to put his hand down his shirt. 

Ginny eventually comes to realize the true nature of the danger she's in after Tex, a pilot she respects refuses to accept that women can do the job too. She realizes that it's the attitude of men that will need to change before women can take their place in the world of aviation.  "As we walked, a new understanding crept into my mind. I was in danger from the men around me. Wright's attack was a shock, and my first realization that Matt was right. Tex had just shocked me again with his opinion of female pilots. He'd been Jimmy's friend and mentor, but if he knew his co-pilot was a girl, how would he react? At this point, I didn't know."

While Jimmy's identity is eventually discovered, the people who know keep the secret, preserving Jimmy/Ginny from any serious consequences, although one wonders how the situation with income tax would have been worked out!

Beyond Amelia is well-written and engaging. Stemp has created the possibility of a fourth novel with Ginny flying for the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squad in the United States. Although the RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) did form a Canadian Women's Auxiliary Air Force, it did not allow women to work as pilots, as in the United Kingdom or in the United States. The author has included a short note at the back detailing some information about the ferrying operation and there are several black and white photographs of Amelia Earhart and Jackie Cochran, a Hudson bomber, and the Newfoundland Airport as it existed during this era.

Book Details:

Beyond Amelia by Heather Stemp

Halifax: Nimbus Publishing Limited   2024
249 pp.

Call Me Bill by Lynette Richards

The story begins with a family on Marrs Island, Nova Scotia, March, 1873. The Clancy's have lived on the protected side of the island for three generations. Sarah Jane's husband, John O'Reilly fished with her father and uncle.

On April 1, 1873, Sarah Jane heard a strange noise, saw flares in the night sky across the island, and awakened her father, Michael, telling him people were in trouble. As he set out, he came across a man on the path, frozen and delirious. Michael sent a man to get help as bigger boats were needed for the open sea.

Across the island, the men found the bodies of women strewn on the rocks. People were clinging to the rocks and out on the water lay the S.S. Atlantic on its side.

At dawn, the bigger boats arrived from Upper Prospect and Terence Bay. The men battled the sea, saving the survivors. The dead they piled on the granite rocks of Ryan's Island. It came to be called "the Hill of Death".

When Captain Williams tried to identify the dead, he was stunned to find that one young sailor who looked like a boy, was a woman. No one knew who she was or how she came to be on the S.S. Atlantic.

But nine months earlier, in June of 1872, in Trenton, New Jersey, Cicely offers Margaret her father's old clothing. Using the name Billy, she took the 4:25 AM train to Jersey City, then the ferry to New York.

In New York City, Billy was hired on by the captain of the S.S. Hutton. It sailed out of New York on July 1, 1872, with Billy as the Engineer's Steward. Finding Billy a good worker, the captain asked her to stay on to China, but Billy was intent on travelling only as far as England. Despite feeling self-conscious in her father's clothing, Billy liked how she was treated when dressed as a man.

In London, Billy left the ship, stayed at the Sailors' Home Boarding House, and purchased sailor clothes and oilskins. While there, Billy saw many injustices but also how women were agitating for social change. To earn money to return to New York, Billy signed on to the Eskdale which was sailing to Genoa, Italy.

On the trip, Billy was bullied by another sailor. She tried to avoid the man as much as possible but eventually Billy decided to fight back. The result was her identity as a woman was discovered by the captain's wife. Margaret admitted to the captain and his wife that she was Maggie Armstrong but that when she wore "pantaloons" she called herself Billy. Maggie's sailor chest, clothes and oilskins that she'd purchased were confiscated and she was forced to dress in women's clothing.

In Aberdeen, Scotland, Maggie was reprimanded by the judge who ordered her to return to New York in the steerage class on the S.S. Victoria. She was told if she returned she would be jailed. On the Victoria, Margaret met Ralph Keeler, a reporter for the New York Tribune. Margaret told Keeler about her life growing up on her family's farm in New Jersey, how she began wearing her brother's clothing when she was nine-years-old, her mother's Quaker activism for social reform, her brother Jamie's death during the Civil War and how his death led to their mother's early death as well. 

Keeler and Margaret disembarked at Castle Gardens: he told her to seek support at Harry Hill's Concert Saloon. There Margaret dressed and lived as Bill. But she missed the sea, so she returned, working on the S.S. Atlantic, a passenger liner owned by the White Star Line. It would be Margaret/Bill's last journey at sea.

Discussion

Author Lynette Richards has crafted an engaging fictional account of the life of Margaret Armstrong, set against the tragedy of the sinking of the passenger liner, the S.S. Atlantic in 1873. Margaret,  a young Dutch New Jersey woman, was able to pass herself off as a male sailor in the late 1800's. Richards, using the graphic novel format, pieces together Margaret's unusual life and her tragic death from primary sources including the Aberdeen Journal, the New York Tribune and the Halifax Chronicle. Some of these sources are included in novel's illustrations.

The Aberdeen Journal's article mentions a Margaret Armstrong, from New Jersey, who dressed as a sailor, called herself Bill and was exposed as a young woman by the wife of the captain of the Eskdale which sailed from Aberdeen to Spain. Ralph Keeler's article in the New York Tribune also describes a young woman who calls herself Maggie Armstrong except when she wears pantaloons and is then called Billy. Maggie was hired on to the Eskdale to travel to Genoa Italy but was exposed as a woman after a fight with one of the men. Then comes the article in the Halifax Chronicle after the sinking of the Atlantic and the discovery that one of the young sailors was in fact, a young woman. As Emily Burton Rocha indicates in her informative introduction, its likely the woman described in these three articles, penned within a matter of months in 1873, is the same person.

Ralph Keeler, author of the Tribune article, is himself an interesting character: he worked in minstrel shows, dressed as a woman and did Black face. So it's not surprising that he would have been interested in the unconventional Margaret Armstrong and want to interview and write about her.

Call Me Bill is a story of resilience, grit and determination. Margaret Armstrong was a woman who felt constrained by the social norms and expectations placed on women in this era. Dressing as a man, gave Margaret the opportunity to be treated better (something she readily noticed) and to support herself - an option that was not common at this time for women. The expectation was that a woman would marry. A sailor's life was hard, but it also offered the opportunity to see the world and a measure of freedom that Margaret would never have had living on a farm in New Jersey.

Richards who serves on the Board of Directors of the S.S. Atlantic Heritage Park and Society, frames Margaret's story with the sinking of the Atlantic. In her Author's Note, Richards writes, "I set out to tell the true story of the SS Atlantic wreck and the heroic rescue through the lens of the mysterious 'female sailor'. Newspapers provided facts, but did not, could not, recount the substance of the person. I recognized myself in this person, and I suspect many readers will too. This story presents the opportunity to explore identity, courage, and the radical imagination of a young person who took huge risks to occupy space that others would have had difficulty imagining."

Although she wrote a long version of this story, Richards decided to use the graphic novel format, "...to activate readers' interest and imaginations around th eimportant history of the SS Atlantic, and the heroic efforts of local Nova Scotian villagers." Her beautiful panels were rendered in grey watercolour washes which she references in her Author's Note. 

Call Me Bill is well-written, interesting and beautifully illustrated. A must-read for those who love graphic novels, unusual historical figures, and Canadian history.

Book Details:

Call Me Bill by Lynette Richards
Wolfville, Nova Scotia: Conundrum Press     2022
96 pp.