It tells a fictional account of what happened to Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, after they disappeared off the coast of New Guinea in 1937.

Flashbacks tell the story of Earhart's life: her childhood desire to become a heroine, her love affair with flying, and her difficult marriage to the man who pushed her further in her career and closer to danger.

Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times, “In this lyrical first novel...Ms. Mendelsohn has chosen to use the bare-boned outlines of the aviator’s life as an armature for a poetic meditation on freedom and love and flight….

"[1] Daphne Merkin wrote in The New Yorker, "[The book] appears like a flash of silver in the leaden skies of contemporary fiction.

Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Strange, slight, but wonderful: a modest portrait that manages to create moments of exceptional intensity and power of feeling.