She finds herself powerfully, unexpectedly drawn to digging out the truth of Marian’s fate. Running in parallel to Marian’s story is a 21st-century narrative: that of Hadley Baxter, a Hollywood ingenue who is attempting to rescue her reputation by making a film about Marian.

Yet Great Circle is more than a historical novel, and the book has more than one heroine. It was on a trip to New Zealand that the idea for this book first arrived: at Auckland airport she saw a statue of Jean Batten, whose epic flights in the 1930s – she was the first person to fly solo from London to New Zealand – made history, though her name is now largely forgotten. Her debut, Seating Arrangements, won the Dylan Thomas prize in 2012 she is also a travel writer whose journeys have taken her to both the Arctic and the Antarctic. It’s no spoiler to reveal her fate, for her disappearance, described in the novel’s first pages, is the spark of Shipstead’s third novel. She and her navigator, Eddie Bloom, vanished somewhere over the Ross ice shelf, on the very last leg of their journey, heading up towards New Zealand. By that time she was, as the reader will learn, an accomplished aviator, a woman obsessed with flight since her girlhood in the wilds of Montana.

In this enthralling novel, Graves disappeared in 1950 while attempting to fly around the world – longitudinally, passing over both north and south poles. With the fictional Marian Graves, Maggie Shipstead creates a compelling, original heroine all her own. Her uncle Wallace is benevolent but benign, a gambler and a drinker, and Marian and Jamie do what they like, she embracing her freedom, he feeding stray dogs and developing his art.T he early history of aviation is full of courageous, fascinating women: Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart are probably the best known. Almost knocked from her horse when an airplane spooks it, she becomes obsessed with flying and haunts the airfields of Missoula, begging for flying lessons that no one will give to a little girl, no matter how tough she is, with her short hair and pants, smuggling hooch for bootleggers. The novel is mostly third person from Marian's perspective, and her life, from childhood, is spellbinding. Safe to say, the part resonates with her, as they say. The plane, Marian and her navigator Eddie were never found, echoing the crash that killed Hadley's own parents, leaving her in the care of her uncle. Hollywood starlet Hadley is cast as Marian Graves, the intrepid aviator whose plane was lost in an attempt to circumnavigate the great circle of the globe. They survive, Captain Graves goes to prison, and Marian and Jamie are taken in by their uncle.

Where to begin with this epic journey of a novel? A 1920s shipwreck, twin babies saved by their father, who also happens to be the captain who really should not have abandoned ship - even to save his children. Great Circle – Maggie Shipstead (Random House, $37.00) Review by Louise Ward, Wardini Books

Great circle novel reviews