http://www.rabtbooktoursandpr.com/

 

Today, I am participating in a tour for a women's fiction novel - Flygirl by R.D. Kardon! Enjoy and don't forget to enter the giveaway!

 

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ABOUT THE BOOK

 

 

Upmarket Commercial/Women’s Fiction
Date Published:January 3, 2019

Publisher: Acorn Publishing LLC

 

Let pilot Tris Miles lift you up, and fly you to new heights with her inspiring story of love, ambition and the meaning of success.

 

R. D. Kardon's debut novel puts you in the cockpit with Tris Miles as she navigates the challenges of integrating an all-male corporate flight department in 1997. Tris encounters harassment, marginalization, and backstabbing on her journey to becoming a jet captain.

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It’s 1997. Women stand beside men in combat and fly fighter jets. Pilot Tris Miles is not content with her job as a First Officer for tiny Clear Sky Airlines. She wants to be a Captain—the only way she knows to prove her worth as a pilot and atone for a deadly mistake.

 

To further her career, Tris accepts a prestigious job with Tetrix, Inc. But her dream of becoming pilot-in-command twists into a nightmare.

 

As the company’s first woman pilot, she encounters resistance, marginalization and harassment on a daily basis.Fortunately Tris has one thing her co-workers can’t deny—skill.

 

When Tris finds herself in a crippled airplane thousands of miles from home she must prove she can lead. With her career on the line, can Tris earn the respect she’s been craving? And if this is the end, can she find the strength to forgive herself?

 

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Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39725733-flygirl

 

BookBub - https://www.bookbub.com/books/flygirl-by-r-d-kardon

 

Riffle - https://www.rifflebooks.com/books/1031285

 

 

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AVAILABLE in print or ebook

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Flygirl-R-D-Kardon-ebook/dp/B07K1JCXS1/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542124195&sr=8-1&keywords=flygirl+r.+d.+kardon

 

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flygirl-r-d-kardon/1129802696?ean=9781947392229

 

 

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EXCERPT 2

 

“WELCOME TO LUXEMBOURG, Astral November Nine Tango X-ray. Runway Two- Four, cleared to land, wind two-five-zero at six knots, right turn off.” Tris acknowledged the landing clearance.

“Gear down, before landing checklist,” Deter said.

Tris grasped the handle that lowered the Astral’s landing gear. She kept her left index finger pointed at the three lights that would turn green when each of the plane’s wheels were down and locked. After a few seconds, Tris saw the left main and nose gear lights illuminate, but the right gear light remained dark.

“I do not have three green. No three green,” she said quickly. The aircraft was just six hundred feet above the ground.

“What the fuck?” Deter screamed but took no action as the Astral moved closer to the ground.

 

Deter hesitated so Tris made the call. “We don’t have three green. Go around!”

“Go around!” Deter slammed full power on the aircraft. He swore under his breath as the airplane’s nose hesitated, then pitched up.

 

Tris lifted the gear handle to stow the gear. Maybe raising it would shake something loose, and that third light would come on next time they tried to put the wheels down. But first, the Astral had to get away from other air traffic.

“Tower, Nine Tango X-ray, missed approach. We can’t con-firm that the landing gear is down and locked. We need a vector to an area where we can diagnose the problem.” Deter nodded along with her demand.

“Roger, Nine Tango X-ray, fly heading two- four-zero, climb and maintain six thousand.

Let us know what happens.”

“What is wrong with the goddamn gear? Recycle it! Now!” Deter’s words landed like blows, his anger unrestrained. Tris recovered quickly; she had to. And she couldn’t punch back. The five souls aboard the Astral were in real danger. They weren’t on the ground with options—they were in the air with none.

 

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Five coffee mugs, three notebooks

 

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/40826401873/

 

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Robin "R.D." Kardon was a litigation attorney before beginning a twelve-year flying career as a corporate and airline pilot. She holds an Airline Transport Pilot certificate and three Captain qualifications. Her travels took her all over the world in every type of airplane from small single-engine Cessnas to the Boeing 737.

Robin earned her B.A. in Journalism and Sociology from NYU and J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law. A native New Yorker, Robin now lives in San Diego, California with her beloved rescue pets. , a work of fiction inspired by her own aviation experience, is her first novel.

 

 

 

 

Website: www.rdkardonauthor.com

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rdkardonauthor/

 

Twitter: @rdkardonauthor

 

Blog: https://www.rdkardonauthor.com/blog-1

 

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/rdk3822/flygirl-a-novel-by-rd-kardon/

 

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17912002.R_D_Kardon

 

BookBub - https://www.bookbub.com/authors/5144739/record_interest

 

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http://www.rabtbooktoursandpr.com/

 

 

 

All Ida Mae Jones wants to do is fly. Her daddy was a pilot, and years after his death she feels closest to him when she's in the air. But as a young black woman in 1940s Louisiana, she knows the sky is off limits to her, until America enters World War II, and the Army forms the WASP-Women Airforce Service Pilots. Ida has a chance to fulfill her dream if she's willing to use her light skin to pass as a white girl. She wants to fly more than anything, but Ida soon learns that denying one's self and family is a heavy burden, and ultimately it's not what you do but who you are that's most important.

Amazon.com

 

 

 

 

Ida Mae Jones grew up on a farm in Louisiana, where her father made ends meet through cultivating his own strawberry farm and doing crop dusting runs for other farmers. It was while tagging along on some of those crop dusting flights that Ida first got the desire to become a pilot herself. By the 1940s, Ida's father has passed away and World War 2 is just on the horizon. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Ida's brother, a medical student, decides to enlist as a field medic. He knows Ida's got the itch to fly but begs her to stay home and help care for farm and family. She tries to obey her brother's wish for a time but just feels like she's sitting on her hands while the world seems to be going up in flames. Ida sneaks out to town one day to apply for a position in the WASP (Women's Airforce Service Pilots) program. Once she finds she's accepted she's got to break it to her mom. Ida's mother reluctantly gives her approval for Ida to travel to Texas to start training.

 

The big secret she's hiding from her new fellow cadets is the fact that she's black, though she believes (or at least fervently hopes) she's light enough to pass as white. Every day she fears her secret being discovered, particularly when a white male instructor takes a special interest in her. Ida also battles against prejudices that stem simply from her being a woman in a man's military. One instructor makes it his personal mission to carry out all kinds of crazy, dangerous schemes to try to get the female pilots to quit. Still, she continues to pursue her dream, inspired by her hero Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman to earn a pilot's license. 

 

One of Ida's biggest concerns she struggles to find an answer to throughout the whole course of the novel is which way is the best way to live her life, in regards to her race. She feels that if she stays in her hometown, the best work she can hope for as a black woman in a small Southern town is being a housekeeper. Though she successfully "passed" as white and got into the WASP program, she fears that now she's locked herself into that role, never being able to come forward about her true heritage. Does she walk away from her family in order to pursue her dreams? It's terrible to think that people were, and maybe still are, forced to ask these kind of questions because of unfair, illogical, racist thinking running the world. I think one of the hardest scenes to read in this story is when Ida's mother comes to visit her at the flight school but has to pose as Ida's family maid, so as not to blow Ida's cover as a well-bred white woman. The way Ida has to address her own mother just to keep her secret safe is heartbreaking, but there's also something touching in how Ida's mother would do that for her daughter, if it meant her girl could have the best life possible. But it just hurt to read that passage, the cruelty social expectations put there.

It was also painful to read Ida's mother's speech about how she tries to do everything she can for the war effort -- use ration books, plant a victory garden, save bacon grease for the Army's munitions department -- yet the Army won't put too much effort into trying to locating her son when he goes MIA, because he's black. 

(spoiler show)

 

The first part of this novel, though good, was a little bit slow for me. It did pick up in the later chapters though, the closer the women got to completing training. I think Ida's visit with her mother at the flight school was the turning point where I felt much more invested in the characters. There's another major event later on in the story where I suspected (at the start of the novel) that something like it might be written in at some point, but actually reading it was still somehow a bit of a shock to me! It is a pivotal moment in the life of Ida and greatly influences her career decisions after that point. 

 

I liked the distinct differences in all the female pilots Ida meets and works with, and after reading Sherri Smith's Author's Note, I'm keen to pick up more books on the subject. Just some of the interesting factoids that Smith notes:

 

> WASP crews were used as test pilots on new aircraft technology during World War 2. One scene in Smith's Flygirl, describing one such test flight, was actually inspired by real life WASP Dora Dougherty Strother and Dorothea Johnson who were chosen to test the prototype of the B-26 Maurader, aka "The Widowmaker". Also tested, the behemoth B-29 whose size scared the beheebus outta many a male pilot! It was incredible (and infuriating!) to learn that the brave women of the WASP program, though definitely considered members of the military, were NOT granted full military benefits while they were enlisted. In fact, it wasn't until 1977 when the Carter administration passed the WASP Act that these women and their family members were provided with honorable discharges and / or full veteran benefits. 1977! Also, it wasn't until the 1990s that female pilots were allowed to fly combat missions. Prior to that, female pilots were stuck being glorified test pilots and supply runners, pretty much. Still important work, don't get me wrong, but I can imagine how aggravating it must have been for those pilots, given how many flight hours they put into trying to be accepted as equally skilled as any of the male pilots. 

 

>The WASP program was disbanded after World War 2. Many of the female pilots simply went back to their old lifestyles, embracing motherhood or taking up jobs as secretaries, teachers, shop clerks. Others who still had the desire to be in the air became flight instructors while yet others took up careers as Alaskan bush pilots. As far as the storyline of Smith's Flygirl, she says that she couldn't find any factual evidence of any African-American women on the rosters of the WASP program, no stories of anyone trying to pass for white ... that was solely Smith's "what if". However, she did find record of one Janet Harmon Bragg, who trained at Coffey School of Aeronautics in Chicago, who did apply for the WASP program but seemed to be turned away solely due to reasons of race. 

 

>There were two Asian women accepted into the WASP program: Hazel Ah Ying (who was later killed in action when her plane collided with another) and Maggie Gee.

 

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Extras 

 

* Here you can read a letter from a real life WASP who wrote to Sherri Smith after reading Flygirl. 

 

* If you want to learn more about the WASP program, you can visit websites Wings Across America or the website for the WASP museum.

Citation: Smith, S. L. (2008). Flygirl. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

 

Annotation: Ida Mae, an eighteen-year-old light-skinned African American, passes herself off as a white woman in order to be allowed to fly as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II.

 

Author's Information: Sherri L. Smith has written several novels for teenagers, including LUCY THE GIANT, SPARROW and HOT, SOUR, SALTY, SWEET. In FLYGIRL, she tells a not-so-well-known side of World War II through the story of the WASP program. Ida Mae is a brave, strong character who has more at stake than other women in the WASPs, which makes this book even more powerful. Smith does an excellent job of weaving in an interesting plot along with the background history of the program. Readers will want to learn more about this subject after turning the last page of this enlightening novel.

 

Awards:

• 2014 ALA Popular Paperback Selection in the category of Conflicted: Life During Wartime
• 2012-13 Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award in the Division II (Grades 6-8) category
• 2012-2013 Virginia Readers’ Choice Award
• 79th California Book Awards Young Adult Gold Medal
• 2012 Grand Canyon Reader Award Nominee
• 2011-2012 Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award Nominee
• 2012 Garden State Teen Book Award Nominee
• 2011-2012 Tennessee Volunteer State Book Award Nominee
• 2011 Utah Beehive Award Nominee
• 2010 ALA Best Books for Young People
• 2010 Capitol Choices Noteworthy Books for Children
• 2010 Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices Selection
• 2010 Kansas State Reading Circle Catalog Selection
• 2010 Amelia Bloomer Project Selection
• 2010 Tayshas Reading List
• 2010-2011 South Carolina Book Award Nominee
• 2009 Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books
• 2009 Washington Post Best Kids’ Books of the Year
• Spring 2009 Indie Next List Pick for Teen Readers

 

Levels: Grades 6-8

Genre: Young Adult Novel- Fiction

I really do like this book. It started off strong, sort of leveled out in the middle, and I'm not sure what to make of the ending. The ending was left open, and I'm not sure if the character ever resolved the concept of her whiteness vs. colorness. I suppose that's for the reader to decide.

I also really like the concept of whiteness vs. colorness. It shows white privilege and brings race to our awareness. I wouldn't doubt people who look white but are colored are treated different. I know a girl who looked white in high school but claimed her black heritage, and to be honest, I remember being surprised that she said she was black when she looked white. It's a strange bias that's hard to put in words. I give kudos to the author for trying to put it into words, but I also hoped that she could have resolved the issue but she didn't. Maybe she didn't because the issue still goes on in this day.

Even though we don't know a lot about all the characters, I feel connected to them, especially Ida Mae and Lily. I wouldn't mind being friends with someone like Ida Mae even though she sounds anxious sometimes. Mama and Grandy are also fun, and I wouldn't mind being in their family. However, sometimes it felt like the stories of the other characters were just dropped off. I think you could write some really cool fanfiction about the other characters, especially expanding on Jolene's story. However, it may be better left to the author to write those stories.

Although it's very realistic what happen to the women of the WASP, I wish something different would have happened to Patsy and Lily. I guess we can't always win though.

As I read the book, I had a suspicion that it was written by a Northerner and not someone native to New Orleans. What gave it away were the comments about the weather and calling the August weather cool. It is never cool in August, especially since August is usually the hottest month of the year. I'm not sure that the dialect used in the novel is accurate, but I'm going to assume some of it is accurate. There were no "making groceries" or "neutral ground" phrases though.

There were some good funny lines though.