A Heart-Stirring Journey of Dreams, Danger, and Destiny
By June O’Sullivan
An Irish woman dares to conquer the skies — and discovers that freedom comes at a cost.
In 1928, Sophie Peirce-Evans marries Sir James Heath. With her new titled status as Lady Heath, she embarks on her most daring adventure yet: a solo flight in a biplane from Cape Town to London. Already a trailblazer – a world-record athlete, Britain’s first woman to parachute from a plane and first to earn a commercial pilot’s license – she is determined to prove that women belong in aviation and to showcase the potential of an aviation route from the colonies.
Fiercely independent, Sophie charts her 10,000-mile route using pages from a road atlas, services her own aircraft, and defies every restriction placed on women. But as she soars over the vast continent memories from a traumatic past resurface: her mother murdered, her father imprisoned in an Irish asylum, and a childhood shaped by repression and loss. Having been stricken with sunstroke, crash-landing in the wilderness and nursed by local women, thwarted at every turn by the authorities and ultimately seeking help from Mussolini, she finally lands in London – heels, furs and all.
Though celebrated, Sophie realises fame cannot free her from her past. She has conquered the skies but not the shadows that follow.
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