Circling The Sun

I had already read a book about Beryl Markham when I read her autobiography West With The Night.  I think I learned more about Beryl in Circling the Sun by Paula McLain.  This book focused on her childhood and her 20's.  Beryl was an unusual woman.  Given her upbringing on a horse farm outside Nairobi, Kenya, her abandonment by her mother at a young age, the abandonment by her father at age 16, how could she be anything but unusual?  Beryl seemed fearless.  She rode wild horses.  She traveled through the wilderness alone and at night.  She flew a plane over the Atlantic Ocean and became the first person to travel that way from west to east.  Beryl didn't care about rules of genteel society, expectations of her Scottish mother-in-law, or expectations of appropriate behavior for women in a British colony.  If the papers wrote scandalous words about her, so be it. Beryl was out to live a full life and to follow her dreams.  Sometimes that meant using people to get what she wanted.  She is an interesting woman and I enjoyed this story about her life.