After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There-after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes-Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles.
A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian's disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian's own story, as the two women's fates-and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times-collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.
"Great Circle is a masterpiece . . . one of the best books I've ever read" - J. Courtney Sullivan
"A sumptuous epic . . . exhilarating . . . this book delivers a series of ahas, of sweet, provocative points of contemplation that make the reader feel alive." - Leigh Haber, Oprah Daily
"A soaring work of historical fiction . . . So convincingly does Shipstead stitch her fictional heroine into the daring flight paths of early aviators that you'll be convinced that you remember the tragic day her plane disappeared. Great Circle is a relentlessly exciting story about a woman maneuvering her way between tradition and prejudice to get what she wants. It's also a culturally rich story that takes full advantage of its extended length to explore the changing landscape of the 20th century. My top recommendation for this summer." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"A feat of a story in every sense." - Entertainment Weekly
"Shipstead's writing soars and dips with dizzying flair . . . With detailed brilliance, she lavishes heart and empathy on every character (save one villain), no matter how small their role. Many authors attempting to create an epic falter at the end, but Shipstead never wavers, pulls out a twist or two that feel fully earned, and then sticks the landing. An expansive story that covers more than a century and seems to encapsulate the whole wide world." - Boston Globe
"Thrilling . . . Great Circle starts high and maintains altitude. One might say it soars. An action-packed book rich with character . . . Great Circle grasps for and ultimately reaches something extraordinary. It pulls off this feat through individual sentences and sensations--by getting each secondary and tertiary character right . . . What's so impressive is how deeply we come to care about each of these people, and how the shape and texture of each of their stories collide to build a story all its own. It's at the level of the sentence and the scene, the small but unforgettable salient detail, that books finally succeed or fail. In that, Great Circle is consistently, often breathtakingly, sound." - Lynn Steger Strong, The New York Times Book Review
"Shipstead's eye for detail, character and the moments that tell all make this a true literary achievement." - Zibby Owens, Good Morning America
"Great Circle is an epic trip--through Prohibition and World War II, from Montana to London to present-day Hollywood--and you'll relish every minute." - People
"The Marian portions rove from Montana to Manhattan to Scotland and Antarctica, and read like a carnival of early-20th-century American history, packed with bootleggers, treacherous boxcar rides, and tragic shipwrecks. The Hadley chapters offer a delectable dissection of life as a celebrity, serving up an intelligent skewering of the Hollywood machine and allowing the book to take flight." - Vogue
"A breathtaking epic . . . This is a stunning feat." - Publishers Weekly
"A fat, juicy peach of a novel . . . A tremendously well-written book, epic in spirit and scope, swooping across continents and through time so effortlessly that it belies the seven years it apparently took to complete." - The Telegraph [UK]
"Accomplished and ambitious . . . Most novelists have their limits and cut their cloth accordingly. Shpstead is a writer who can vividly summon whatever she chooses, taking the reader deep inside the worlds she creates. Shipstead moves us round the globe with ease; she also takes us smoothly through history . . . Her writing is confident and knowing; her descriptions of light and air sometimes beautiful. Marian Graves is a character so real that I twice googled her to check." - Financial Times [UK]
"The destinies of [Shipstead's] unforgettable characters intersect in ways that reverberate through a hundred years of story. Whether Shipstead is creating scenes in the Prohibition-era American West, in wartime London, or on a Hollywood movie set, her research is as invisible as it should be, allowing a fully immersive experience. Ingeniously structured and so damn entertaining; this novel is as ambitious as its heroines--but it never falls from the sky." - Kirkus Reviews
"Highly recommended--intricately designed, [with a] compelling cast of characters. As Hadley learns some of Marian's secrets, readers will wonder how much we can truly know anyone." - Library Journal
"Transcendent . . . A rolling, roiling epic . . . Through the interwoven stories of impetuous flyer Marian Graves and flavor-of-the-month actress Hadley Baxter, Shipstead ponders the motivating forces behind acts of daring defiance, self-fulfillment and self-destruction. An ambitious, soaring saga--[Shipstead] takes her characters to dizzying heights, drawing readers into lives of courage and mystery." - Booklist
"Inherently epic . . .Shipstead sweeps readers from earth to sky and back again . . . Underpinning it all is a reverence for nature, thrumming in the forests of Montana, the jagged peaks of Alaska and the stupefying ice shelves of the Antarctic. Shipstead's exhilarating, masterful depictions of Marian's flights feel like shared experiences that invite readers to contemplate both magnitude and majesty. Great Circle is sure to give even firmly earthbound readers a new appreciation for those who are compelled ever skyward." - BookPage
