Marian Graves needed to fly. Enthralled by the airshow and its swaggering pilots that barnstormed her 1920s Missoula, Montana hometown, 14 year-old Marian found her life's pursuit. Hadley Baxter needed a comeback. Caught up in scandal, hounded by paparazzi, and fired from her globally popular romantic fantasy film series, Hadley looks to return to the screen portraying Marian Graves in an independent film about the famed pilot's mysterious in-flight disappearance over Antarctica in the 1950s. Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead spans a century in rich, sensuous detail--from turn-of-the century luxury ocean liners to bootleggers, bush pilots, WWII transport pilots, and present-day Hollywood--while interrogating the roles women must play and the gulf between one's personal identity and others' understanding and interpretation of it. In lesser hands, a novel with the narrative breadth and storytelling pointillism of Great Circle would never get off the ground. Under Maggie Shipstead's steady, skillful and meticulous control, Great Circle glides, it cruises, it soars.