I am reading based on an interview with the author. He lives in West Virginia and grew up in a world so devoid of art, when he went to write he was too ignorant not to make certain mistakes. Thank god.His writing is raw, rough, painful, darkly comic and completely great. This is what I hoped would happen after the Fall of Publishing...an Indy house publishes a fast ball out of nowhere that is brutally honest and great.

I have read this book repeatedly throughout my life and, like Anna Karenina, I look up at the end and can't believe they've all left the room. Beryl Markham lived a life as a free woman in Africa. A handful of women have lived as she did and most men are too afraid. Two of her lovers were Denys-Fitch Hatton of Out of Africa fame and St Exupey, the pilot and writer. (I remember reading a description of one of their ecstatic flights over Kenya.)