Flying Jenny

By Mardo Williams

Finalist for the 2019 Oklahoma Book Awards, Fiction

"Another New York novel, Flying Jenny by Thesa Tuohy, is a fictionalized account drawn from an obituary that appeared in the New York Times in 2010. As seen through the eyes of Laura Bailey, a tabloid newspaper reporter, Jenny Flynn, a stunt pilot (inspired by the exploits of Elinor Smith), begins the book by swooping under the East River bridges on an audacious flight west."
--New York Times, included in Sam Roberts's Bookshelf roundup

"Besides Earth, females are also overtaking the sky. Flying Jenny is another read by Theasa Tuohy. Her mom, friend of Wiley Post, first to fly solo around the world, was a pilot in the '30s. And Elinor Smith in 1928 flew a Waco 10 plane under all NYC bridges. Mayor Jimmy Walker then suspended her for 10 days."
--New York Post

"[Protagonists Jenny and Laura] eventually find commonality in staring down the sexist mechanisms of the time, each in her own way. Tuohy uses fun period details and jargon to create a lively 1920s setting for this story about self-discovery, friendship, and upsetting the patriarchy."
--Booklist

"Tuohy uses both Jenny and Laura to explore gender roles in the late 1920s and how two young women push their own boundaries as well as the society around them."
--Historical Novels Review

"As entertaining a piece of historical fiction as I have read this year...Tuohy engages readers in all sorts of flying activities--air shows, air races and flying derbies--in which women pilots in the 1920s and '30s participated...I recommend it to anyone who might be interested in women who prepared the airways for today's female pilots."
--The Oklahoman

"The heroes and heroines and the characters Tuohy brings to life in the book were derived from tales told to her by her mother, the daring, petite fire-cracker female pilot (named Theasa as well), who was a conteporary of Will Rogers and friend of Wiley Post, the first pilot to fly solo around the world."
--Life in the Finger Lakes Magazine

"It is August 1929, and this romp through the early days of women's aviation history arrives with all the immediacy of a late-night edition. Theasa Tuohy memorably limns the adventures of not one but two pioneering women. Debutante pilot Jenny Flynn and cub reporter Laura Bailey carry the spunk of Thelma & Louise to new heights as they fight for space in the cockpit and the city room."
--Janet Groth, author of The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker

People are doing all sorts of screwy things in 1929. It is a time of hope, boundless optimism, and prosperity. "Blue Skies" is the song on everyone's lips. The tabloids are full of flagpole sitters, flappers, and marathon dancers. Ever since Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic solo, the entire world has gone nuts over flying. But everyone agrees that the stunt pilots take the cake.

Jenny Flynn defies the odds and conventions in her pursuit of the sky. She attracts the attention of Laura Bailey, a brash reporter crashing through her own glass ceiling at a New York City newspaper. Laura chases the pilot's story--and the truth about her own mysterious father--on a barnstorming escapade from Manhattan to the Midwest.

Flying Jenny offers a vivid portrait of an earlier time when airplanes drew swarming crowds entranced by the pioneers--male and female--of flight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kaylie Jones Books
• Release date: May 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781617756450

Mardo Williams

Mardo Williams' story is right out of the pages of Horatio Alger whose books he read as a young boy. Alger's heroes valiantly overcome poverty and adversity and this seems to be exactly what he did. He grew up on a 100-acre subsistence farm; serendipitously--after he lost his job at the Kenton, Ohio car shops because of the Depression--he answered an ad and became the only reporter at the Kenton News-Republican, a small Ohio daily. (He'd always had an inclination to write.) He had no college degree but while he'd been cleaning out the insides of the smokestacks of the locomotives up in Toledo, he'd taken two courses at the business school there, shorthand and typing, and so he was prepared to be a reporter. He did all the beats, hoofed it around the small town of Kenton digging up stories on slow news days. Nineteen years later, after World War II ended, the Columbus Dispatch recruited him to the copy desk. He moved up the ranks from the copy desk to travel editor . . . and in 1954 he was asked to develop and write stories about the world of business. Columbus was booming at this time. Mardo, familiar with pounding the pavement to search out stories, did just that. Within the year, he was writing a daily business column with byline. After he retired from the Dispatch in 1970, he freelanced for several years, editing a newsletter and doing publicity. He began his second career, writing books, at age 88, after his wife died after a long illness. At his daughters' urging, he learned to use a computer and began writing his first book, Maude. It was about his mother, who lived to be 110, and also about life at the turn of the century when everything was done arduously by hand. This was to be for family, but his daughter Kay read a few sections to her writers group. They loved it, and wanted more. The manuscript grew from 50 pages to a 334 page book with a 32 page picture insert. The finished product was published in 1996, Maude (1883--1993): She Grew Up with the Country. It has been adopted by some college American history classes as a supplemental text "to put a human face on history." Then Mardo wrote an illustrated children's book, Great-Grandpa Fussy and the Little Puckerdoodles, based on the escapades of four of his great-grandchildren. He decided at age 92 that he would try something completely different--a novel, One Last Dance. His magnum opus. He spent three years writing the first draft while tour...