Maggie Shipstead

Spanning Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles, Great Circle tells the unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost. After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There--after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles. A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian's disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian's own story, as the two women's fates--and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times--collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.

Great Circle

Elli

"That's what I mean. Things might be better without anyone to worry about. He leans forward, his folded arms sliding on the table. "That's not true. That would be the most terrible loneliness."

Lizzy Jensen

Closure doesn’t really exist though. That’s why we’re always looking for it. 

Looking at Jamie was like seeing a vision of herself as a man, full of certainty that things could be set right, full of faith that new possibilitis would always arise. "There's no other way" she said. “Believe me." 

One thing I learned is that you don't just love a person, you love a vision of your life with them. And then you have to mourn both. 

I was still trying to escape my feelings for Alexei, my guilt about Oliver, hoping Redwood would turn out to be the key that freed me. Maybe he was hoping I was something equally improbable. We think each new romantic prospect, each new lover, is a fresh start, but really we're just tacking into the wind, each new trajectory determined by the last, plotting a jagged yet unbroken line of reactions through our lives. That was part of the problem: I was always just reacting, always just geting buffeted along, never setting a destination.

"You could have just told me you were married." Ruth said. "You're not so special that everything has to be a secret." 

Ruth let out a derisive snort. "You do so. And that's why you know you can drop people, and they'll still come back. You were right, too. I came crawling as soon as you snapped your fingers." 

Alawander Bouston 

hen you are truly afraid, you experience an urgent desire to split from your body. You want to remove yourself from the thing that will experience pain and horror, but you are that thing. You are aboard a sinking ship, and you are the ship itself.

Great Circle quotes

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