A Heart-Stirring Journey of Dreams, Danger, and Destiny
An Irish woman dares to conquer the skies—and discovers that freedom comes at a cost. The extraordinary true story of Lady Mary Heath.
In 1928, newlywed Lady Mary Heath embarks on her most daring adventure yet: a solo flight in a biplane from Cape Town to London. Already a trailblazer—a world-record athlete, Britain’s first woman to parachute from a plane and the first to earn a commercial pilot’s licence—she is determined to prove that women belong in aviation and to open a new air route from the colonies to Britain.
Fiercely independent, Sophie charts her 10,000-mile route using pages torn from a road atlas, services her own aircraft, and defies every rule that says she cannot. But as she soars over the vast continent, memories from a traumatic past rise like turbulence—her mother’s murder, her father’s imprisonment in an Irish asylum, and a childhood steeped in secrecy.
Stricken with sunstroke, forced down in the wilderness, helped by strangers and hindered by officials, she fights not only the elements but the shadows that follow her.
When she finally lands in London—heels, furs and all—Sophie learns that fame cannot free her from her past. She has conquered the skies, but can she ever escape the ghosts that haunt her?
