The Aviator's Wife

'The Aviator's Wife' by Melanie Benjamin is very fast and emotional read. I was overwhelmed me by the sharp historical details of the reactions of the public to Lucky Lindbergh's flight. There was the ever present popping of flash bulbs, the rude remarks by the public and the terrible realization that you and your family could never be safe when in the public eye.

This book is not about Charles Lindberg although Anne Morrow's life would have never been the same if she hadn't married her hero. Anne grew up being her daddy's "good girl", eager to please and dependable to a fault. This causes her great anguish until she was finally able to emerge a truly confident woman who did not have to hide her feelings and thoughts.

Instead of book full show more of facts and dates like a regular biography, Melanie Benjamin wrote one based on her interpretation of Anne's emotional reaction to the important events in her life and what being married to Charles Lindberg must have been like. I love this form of biography. I felt the pain that Anne felt when people called her Mrs. Lindberg, although she was a Smith graduate, had a pilot's license, could do celestial navigation and had so many achievements like being the first woman to fly a glider.

Anne Morrow Lindberg's feelings of self-hatred were easily evident when she hid her true feeling when meeting the Gorings at the 1936 Summer Olympics and heard discussions about the purity of the Nordic Race. Her father was half Jewish so that made it even more painful.

Her pain was excruciating when her son was taken from her and the publicity surrounding the event was so heartbreaking that it hurt to read about it. She had joys in her life but the tragedies made them seem so rare and sparking like the dew on the grass. Before reading this book, I had previously read Anne Morrow's famous book, 'Gift from the Sea' and also book about Charles Lindberg (the title long forgotten. This book was different; it made me understand her life and the emotional torture that she went through.

I am very grateful that Melanie Benjamin wrote this book. I would recommend this book to all women and to men who want to know and understand women better. In fact, I think I even understand myself better after reading this book.

I received this Advance Reading Copy of `The Aviator's Wife" from the Amazon Vine Program and that in no way influenced my thoughts. show less

More than just a fictional biography, The Aviator's Wife is the story of a woman finding herself and finding her voice. Benjamin fully subsumes the reader in Anne's psyche. Anne's head isn't always a comfortable place to be in the early and middle years of her marriage to Charles, as she struggles to keep her own identity as she orbits her insanely famous husband. Still, Anne was a real woman, and Benjamin makes her live once again between the covers of The Aviator's Wife. Despite her unique problems as a woman in the spotlight, her general struggles with balancing children, husband, and self will be familiar to many women.

The wives of famous men must sometimes feel invisible. That was not quite true of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of Charles Lindbergh, once the most celebrated human being on the planet. She was his copilot on many record-setting flights and the first American woman to fly a glider by herself. She wrote several books, most notably The Gift from the Sea. She got much more attention than she ever wanted after the kidnapping and murder of her first-born son. She had to wear a disguise to go shopping or to a play, even before the age of television.

Melanie Benjamin, whose insightful biographical novels are among the best being written these days, covers all this and more in “The Aviator's Wife” (2013). One might think it would be difficult show more to make a cohesive story that stretches all the way from their first meeting, soon after Lindbergh's solo flight to Paris in 1927, to his death in 1974, yet Benjamin pulls it off nicely.

Like everyone else, young Anne never thinks Charles would ever choose her. Elizabeth, her more beautiful older sister, is the one the Morrow family pushes in front of the hero when he comes to visit. Yet he sees in Anne someone more like himself — someone intelligent, orderly, reserved and adventurous. Yet Anne isn't quite the female version of himself Charles imagines her to be.

She yearns for a more traditional family, with husband and wife living in the same home and sleeping in the same bedroom, surrounded by their loving children. Yet Charles always has somewhere else he has to be and often leaves for months at a time, then is distant even when he comes home. His children admire him, yet also fear him. He is demanding and rarely lets his feelings show.

Anne doesn't learn until near the end of his life that her husband has other families in other countries, although by this time she has already been involved in a longtime adulterous relationship with the family doctor.

As in her other novels, the authors sticks close to the facts, filling in the blanks, such as those regarding emotions and private conversations, to build her story.

The author doesn't back away from the aviator's admiration for Hitler in the 1930s, his negative attitude toward Jews and his strong opposition to America's involvement in the war. Anne, like Melanie Benjamin herself, doesn't stand behind everything Charles Lindbergh does or doesn't do, believes or doesn't believe. Yet she never stops regarding him as a hero. show less

This is what historical fiction should be. We all know about Charles Lindbergh, and we may have read Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book, but how much do we really know about them as a couple. Charles was not an easy marriage partner. He was self-centered and expected his family to be run like a military unit. Told in first person by Anne, we see an unknown side to both of them. After reading this book, my admiration for Anne as a person, not just "Lindbergh's wife" has grown.

What a wonderful piece of historical fiction. Everyone should read this book about Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh's life. He was just too possessive for my liking and Anne lapped it up when he gave her compliments that she was his only co-pilot (literally even though she had her pilots license too). She was a strong woman herself in some ways but catered to him. He always got his way it seems. I guess you can say she was starry eyed.

She never wanted to leave Charles, Jr. especially when they left for 6 months travel when he was 1. Everyone knows the history of the Lindbergh baby, and a tragic one. I wanted to skip over that part since it was hard to read but it's part of reality and I only knew the basics and really never show more delved into it.

Rich in details but a little too long for my liking. show less

This is the #1 book of the year for me. I couldn't put it down! Historical fiction has always been my choice of reading. This book brought me back to this genre.

Narrated from Ann Morrow Lindbergh's point of view, we learn her strength, her weakness (staying with a cad for so many years while he left his family alone, with no contact information for long, long periods of time), and the reader learns of the sharp, determined, egocentric, controlling, self centered hero, Charles Lindbergh.

While he roamed the world, admonishing her grief when their first born was kidnapped and killed, Ann stayed behind as five more children were born and raised by her.

She was a strong, intelligent woman who was the first female to obtain a pilot's license. show more Taught by Charles in a demanding fashion, she soon learned to navigate both with instruments, and by Polaris, the bright constant star.

Despite her growing anger and longing to claim her individuality, Charles remained her constant star throughout the many years of their marriage.

The mark of great historical fiction challenges the reader to learn more, to separate the facts from the fiction. Melanie Benjamin does an amazing job of this!

While the author writes of Ann's supreme anger, dismay of betrayal when, before Charles' death, she discovered there were three German mistresses with whom he sired a total of seven children, in fact, I researched to learn that it was their children, who when contacted by their half siblings, discovered their father's other lives, long after Ann's death.

Mainly, I was in awe of the author's ability to paint Ann's feelings of love and hate of the hero Charles Lindbergh. And, haven't we all felt that at times in our lives, ie the longing to be loved, the disappointment in ourselves when we know we have loved too much to receive so very little in return? show less

I was so looking forward to reading this fictional account of the life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I have long admired her writing, and have read much of her history, as laid down in her own words. Unfortunately, I think there was more of fiction than of history in this historical fiction by Melanie Benjamin. Of course, some creative license is expected, but I was appalled at how far askew of the facts Benjamin was willing to go. What made it more irritating was that the life of Anne Morrow and Charles Lindbergh needs no enhancement to make it interesting or compelling.

What struck me the most was how little of the essence of Anne Benjamin seemed to capture. I did not get the feeling that the girl she was describing was anything like the show more one I encountered in Anne’s diaries, nor could I catch a glimpse of the woman I found in Gifts From the Sea. I have, sitting on my bookshelf, an unread biography of Anne, and I am anxious to read that and see if my impressions are borne out by the biographer in a way they were not by Ms. Benjamin.

As for Charles Lindbergh, I think he was in a terrible position, as those who are worshiped as beyond human so often are, to find any happiness with his fame and fortune. I hope he was not as despicable a person as Benjamin has painted, although it does not take knowing much of his story to realize that his heroics were more of the bravery and courage realm than the moral one.

Anyone trying to imagine what life must have been like for these two people after the sensationalized events surrounding the kidnapping and murder of their first child must certainly have some difficulties. It would be hard to grasp an event like this without all the outside agitation, dealing with it in the face of so much adulation and insanity from the public is impossible to envision. What is fairly easy to comprehend is the difficulty of trying to have even a semblance of a normal life afterward. Few marriages survive such an ordeal, and in today’s environment, divorce would be an expected outcome. The strain of living with the memory alone would be insufferable. That they had the fortitude to bring five other children into this world is amazing.

To anyone reading this without a background in the actual history of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, I would only caution that you take what you are reading with a grain of salt. In an effort to be sensational, I fear Ms. Benjamin has also been unfair. show less