This is a book I purchased with mixed feelings. Benjamin calls it historical fiction — more like fictional biography — and it is based on the life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, famous author and aviator in her own right and wife of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, the first person to successfully fly cross the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris. In her Author’s Note, Benjamin says she “wanted to make Anne the heroine of her own story… as … she is far too often overshadowed by the dominant personality that is Charles Lindbergh”. Yet, her title continues to put Anne in his shadow, The Aviator’s Wife. While Benjamin purports to have admiration for Anne, she has chosen to make unfounded and tawdry suppositions about Anne’s life while some of her children are still living; these suppositions will appeal only to the curious. For myself, I can only say I was hoping for a much better portrayal of a person whose life and writing I admire and who was a philosopher in many ways, a person who sought truth and balance in a world where these intangibles are seldom found, and who managed to make a peace within herself.
For facts about the life of this courageous, self-effacing woman, one only needs to read her diaries which are at times delightful and at other times heart wrenching. Benjamin says they have been edited. Well, of course they have. They began when she was in her mid teens and there will always be events that are somewhat similar and repetitive or may only serve to lengthen a book unnecessarily. There will always be things that are meant to remain private and that should be respected.
I find it appalling that Benjamin has used the first person narrative in a similar style to Anne’s diaries; it tends to make it seem autobiographical when it clearly is not. Indeed, there are events almost quoted word for word from AML’s diaries. I fear Ms. Benjamin has merely written a salaciously imagined story with an eye to marketing and sales. It is an insult to a private couple who shunned the limelight while living and are no longer able to protect themselves, their children, and their grandchildren from such affronts.
I never thought I would write a review like this of any book or author and spent a long time thinking about it before embarking on it. Imagined affairs and bedroom scenes are cheap and degrading. This is not a book that brings Mrs. Lindbergh “out of the shadow” of her husband, it merely subjects her to yet another limelight and scrutiny unsought and undeserved. If you want to know who Anne Morrow Lindbergh was, read her diaries, her adventures, her books on philosophy, and even her poetry. Read books by her daughter, Reeve Lindbergh. But give this book a pass; it is not worth the paper it’s printed on.
Books by Anne Lindbergh:
North to the Orient (1935); Listen! The Wind (1938); The Steep Ascent (1944); Gift from the Sea (1955); The Unicorn and Other Poems (1956); Dearly Beloved (1962); Earth Shine (1969); Bring Me a Unicorn (1972); Hour of Gold; Hour of Lead (1973); Locked Rooms and Open Doors (1974); The Flower and the Nettle (1975); War Within and Without (1980); Hour of Lead: Sharing Sorrow (1986); Wisdom from Gift from the Sea (2001), Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Under a Wing, a memoir by Reeve Lindbergh (1998); No More Words, A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh edited by Reeve Lindbergh (2001).