West with the Night: A Memoir

Description: "Originally published in 1942 by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Published in 1983 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux"--Copyright page.

Brief description: Beryl Markham (1902-1986) was a British-born Kenyan aviatrix, adventurer, and racehorse trainer. During the pioneer days of aviation, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. She died at the age of 83 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Review Quotes:

"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people's stories, are absolutely true . . . I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book." --Ernest Hemingway

"West with the Night is the sort of book that makes you think human beings can do anything . . . When she was a mere child, she was clawed by a lion. This should have been enough to make anybody timid for life, but not Beryl . . . A jewel of taut writing and thrilling reading . . . The girl can write." --John Chamberlain, The New York Times