264th Review Off the Ground- Catherine Richmond

Off the Ground- Catherine Richmond

Romantic story

The colourful front cover of this book ‘Off the ground’ (e-book and paperback!) suggests a romantic story in which flying is involved. Well that is exactly what the reader gets. A nice lovely story about a girl named Corry who falls in love with flying which in that time was a purely men’s world (we are talking about the thirties when flying was a dangerous adventure). Her father buys her a plane as a birthday present which is a very generous gift for a young high school girl. She is enthusiastic but rejects the things that involves learning to fly planes such as washing, cleaning, checking the condition of the motor and discovers the hard road to become a solo pilot. However soon she is gripped by the flying virus and she becomes a fanatic and driven pilot.

High School

The book starts in the period that she is attending high school where she meets Marc her basketball trainer. Marc immediately falls in love with Corry which is mutual but he rejects her flying ambitions because he witnessed an airplane crash in the past involving a relative and when he is offered a job as shop manager in Chicago he accepts and leaves his love behind. The main reason for this is that he doesn’t want to be confronted with a deadly airplane crash involving his big love Corry. He cuts all communications with his high school contacts and everything that connects him to Corry. Meanwhile Corry gets more and more involved with aviation and we follow her experiencing setbacks and triumphs while becoming an experienced fly girl and meeting famous aviators.

But at the end both lovers cannot further deny their attraction to each other and Marc looks her up and asks her to marry him. But after that her attraction to aviation and his fear of losing his big love are colliding many times and their marriage nearly ends in disaster. A big part of this book is covering their confrontations in the first years of their marriage but at the end Corry decides for Marc and the books has a happy ending

Aviation

Yes aviation is part of this book but overall it is a love story of two people divided by fear for flying from his side and passion for flying from her side. Female readers will love the book whether they like flying or not but men interested in aviation will quickly hand over the book to their wives or girlfriends.

I bought this book from Amazon for a good price and my wife loved reading it.