...turning your back on your family, I knew, wasn’t nearly as terrifying as turning your back on an entire nation. [loc. 3643]
Stella North is the only female contestant in Europe's first ever youth air race. It's 1937, and the European powers are desperately trying to avert war: 'No one who fought here twenty years ago and survived wanted to see their sons come of age and go straight out to fight another war'. Meanwhile, the young men who are Stella's (male) competitors seem to be obsessed with the war records of their instructors and chaperones. She's especially vexed by the French pilot, Tony Roberts, who strongly resembles the German pilot, Sebastian Rainer. Tony flew in Spain, during the Civil War: Sebastian has never heard of Guernica.
On the first leg of the race, a pilot is forced out of the sky by another plane. Stella is the only witness, and she's terrified that she will be the next target. Instead, she's under suspicion ...
This is a murder mystery, but it's also about the joy of flying, and about being 'stateless' (Stella's a refugee whose parents were murdered during the Russian revolution), and there is friendship and perhaps romance. Ignore the 'young adult' labelling: this is a well-researched and immensely readable novel, with credible characters and a complex plot. Wein handles the looming war -- which the characters dread, but don't know is going to happen -- with sensitivity, and the young aviators have a variety of perspectives and opinions ... many of which have changed by the end of the novel.
Wein's afterword, 'written in a terrifying present and addressed to an unknown future', mentions some of her sources and inspirations: she also writes that 'It was impossible... to ignore that the 1937 setting was on the brink of events that would alter civilization forever. During the two years that I worked on the novel, between May 2020 and March 2022, it felt rather as if I were writing a book set in the autumn of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.' (loc. 4791). Writing this review on the day that America has bombed Iran, I also feel that sense of being on the brink: but I've felt like this for so long now...
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