History buffs may find some entertaining reading in these nonfiction books about people lost in one way or another.
“Lost: Amelia Earhart’s Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life” by Rachel Hartigan is half biography and half real-life mystery.
Amelia Earhart was one of the most famous women in America in the 1930s. Hartigan tells us what it was like for young Amelia to discover her love for planes and flying, then goes on to recount some of her airborne adventures. But what Earhart is mostly known for is the mystery around her disappearance. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were attempting to circumnavigate the globe in 1937, flying from west to east. Hartigan writes, “They’d already flown 22,000 miles over the course of a month, with 7,000 more to go — all over open water. ... 18 or more hours across the Pacific to an island just 20 feet above sea level and a mere one and a half miles long. If they missed Howland, they had nowhere else to go.” And they missed Howland. They simply disappeared.
What happened to them? There are three basic schools of thought: They crash-landed and were captured by the Japanese and taken elsewhere. They landed on a deserted island and died of starvation. They ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea. As the book conveys, there have been many avid researchers looking for Earhart since the day she disappeared, most firmly convinced they knew where to find her. Searchers used everything, from the latest scientific techniques to dogs trained to find human remains, following hunches or well calculated theories.
“Whether they believed Earhart had died a castaway on Nikumaroro, perished as a captive of the Japanese on Saipan, or drowned in the Pacific, these men — and the searchers were mostly men — seemed pretty sure they knew exactly what had happened. They knew the mistakes Earhart had made, whose stories to believe, and which evidence mattered. Their witnesses contradicted each other ... yet still they maintained their certainty.”
Despite conflicting information, unreliable “eyewitnesses,” and blurry photos, the searchers pressed on. There were so many rumors to follow up on. One woman said “she remembered seeing an American girl flyer dressed in men’s khaki clothes, and with a short boyish haircut” and was convinced it was Earhart. Some even said that after the Japanese captured her, she’d become Tokyo Rose. A strange case of misidentification led many people to believe a woman in New York was really Amelia. In another case, a photo purportedly shows Noonan with Amelia, her back to the camera. Almost anything — a skull or a shoe or a piece from a plane — would spark the imagination and a new search was on.
The biography of Earhart and her adventures is interspersed with the tales of those obsessed with finding her. The book is highly readable and has an extensive bibliography. I don’t know which was more fun reading about — her hair-raising adventures or the many intense efforts at finding her. As for what really happened, we’ll probably never know.
“Forgotten Souls: The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen” was written by Cheryl W. Thompson, whose father was one of the Tuskegee Airmen. The author interviewed family members and fellow service members of the Black pilots lost during World War II, so she’s able to give us mini-biographies of many of the men, making their losses poignant.
The Tuskegee Army Flying School was set up in Alabama during World War II to train Black pilots, mostly to provide support for the White pilots in Europe. It had separate training and combat units and a separate training command from the White units. “In all, 992 pilots graduated from Tuskegee Army Air Field; 355 of them would serve overseas ... in one of four fighter squadrons,” Thompson notes. “They completed about 1,500 missions in Europe and North Africa.”
Of these men, 27 went missing in combat. “All twenty-seven were lost while on critical missions in Europe. Three of them vanished while on the same mission. Several disappeared after their planes collided with others midair.” Several of the men simply disappeared in fog or clouds. More than a third were victims of their plane’s engine or mechanical trouble. At least 24 of them have never been located. It seemed that not much effort went into searching for them. Sometimes “the military offered no reason for not looking for these brave young men. Their Negro souls were just forgotten. Being Black at that time never was an asset,” the author asserts.
Thompson is bitter about the racism, which comes through. “They disappeared while fighting valiantly for a country that was hesitant to even acknowledge their mere existence. The U.S. military didn’t want the men as pilots and fought hard to keep them out,” she maintains. “In their eyes, those Black men could never be smart enough, even though many had college degrees in engineering, math or science, and promising futures.” As just one example of their unequal treatment, the author writes, “Back then, Black pilots had to complete seventy missions — what the military considered a tour of duty — before being sent back to the United States for ‘R&R,’ rest and relaxation. White pilots were required to fly only fifty missions before they got to rest up.”
Also, “There was a lot of mechanical failure.” The author asks, were they deliberately given the worst planes?
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt “became a staunch supporter” of the Tuskegee pilots. In 2007 President George W. Bush awarded them the Congressional Medal of Honor. In our house, they were always considered heroes.
“Lost Heirs of the Medieval Crown: The Kings and Queens Who Never Were” by J.F. Andrews is a very readable trek through English history from about 1100 to 1500, from William the Conquerer to the last of the Plantagenets. The book “focuses on those who were genuinely considered to be next in line to the throne and who expected to be crowned but who — for a number of different reasons — never made it to the top.”
Andrews starts with William the Conqueror’s eldest son, who was the recognized heir but was beaten to the throne by his younger brother. Back then, it wasn’t just about birth order, nearest heir, or even designated successor: Even more depended upon location, location, location. Who could get to London faster and get himself crowned when the king died? Once a crown was given, it couldn’t be taken back. And even “primogeniture was still not an exact science,” especially if the king had no sons. Toddlers were often married off to cement political relationships.
Toddlers could even become king.
“History is written by the winners, but every game of thrones has its losers too, and their fascinating stories bring richness and depth to what is a colourful period of history,” the author writes.
As with all British history, you need a scorecard, since too many have the same name, both male and female. Unless you’re really familiar with British history, you may find all the many Henrys, Edwards, Richards, Anns, Eleanors, and Matildas a bit confusing.
In one example of perfidy, “In January 1203 Arthur [nephew of Richard I and heir presumptive to the throne] ... disappeared into the dungeons ... and was never seen again. ... What happened to Arthur is one of the great unsolved historical mysteries. There is little doubt that he was murdered, but exactly how, when, and under what circumstances remains a matter of debate.”
This will be of interest to fans of Shakespeare’s histories and of movies such as “The Lion in Winter.” It has murder, strategy, deceit, mystery, the princes in the tower, the Wars of the Roses, rivalry with French kings, and almost constant wars. British history was like a game of chess!
Happy reading!
Mary Louise Ruehr
Mary Louise Ruehr is a books columnist for The Portager. Her One for the Books column previously appeared in the Record-Courier, where she was an editor.