QUEEN OF ACES
by Aaron Masters
Top Publications, August 2000 ISBN 1-929976-02-X
Trade Paperback
The Queen of Aces is a romantic action adventure about one of America's best
pilots, Meg Reilly, as told by "Life" reporter Aaron Masters. Following in the
footsteps of her godmother, Amelia Earhart, and her father, a WWI combat ace and fighter
designer, Meg soon becomes the First Lady of the Air. Her love-hate relationship with
upstart racer Hub Martin soon evolves into a love triangle with
Masters. With the outbreak of WWII, Meg is relegated to ferrying duty as a WAF. Meg makes
a major contribution to the war only to be inactivated along with her fellow WASPs. Meg
ventures to Europe to ferry P-51s and is presented with a chance to fly in combat. It is
over the skies of France that Meg is faced with the biggest challenge of her flying career
and her life.
Review
Queen of Aces a true-to-life biography of American
flying legend Meg Reilly, written as a novel that captures the essence of this dynamic,
stubborn woman. Author Masters, who is probably as energetic and as stubborn as his
subject--a former Green Beret Captain with a masters (appropriately) in
telecommunications--injects himself fictionally into the story, and captures as no
biography could, the sheer living essence of the woman. Growing up in the 1920-30's
era of Amelia Earhart, in a family of pilots flying in air shows Reilly developed from a
young naïf to a precise, brave, quick thinker who became a flying heroine. But in
World War II, as a woman, she was refused air combat roles and was relegated to the
women's air services. Finally, in Europe, she became the first American woman to
engage the enemy in the air. but the point here is the fiction that shows the
rambunctious, proud, cascading events, and the iron determination that made this
woman. Air show crowds, working on airplanes, the war--and always flying, the
cockpits, the runways, and the splendid air battle scenes. Masters knows, literally,
all the nuts and bolts of airplanes and flying, and he writes with the easy familiarity of
the sympathetic author who knows his woman. His dialogue is superb. This is a
real, honest, very human book filled with the gritty humor and the special grit of life as
it was and still is in the hearts and minds of every dynamic human soul. Review by The Book Reader
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