The Jerrie Mock Story-The First Woman to Fly Solo Around the World

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The Jerrie Mock Story: The First Woman to Fly Solo around the World.

Pimm, Nancy Roe (Author)

Mar 2016. 150 p. Ohio Univ., paperback, $14.95. (9780821422168). 629.

On the cover of this biography, Geraldine Mock looks like a modest midcentury housewife. Appearances,

though, can be deceiving. Jerrie Mock was a fearless female, who acquired a love of flying as a young

child, and became the first woman to fly solo around the world in 1964. Out of personal interviews with

Mock, held just before her death in 2014, and the recollections of her loved ones, Pimm weaves a narrative

of a young girl’s early aspirations to become a pilot, the tension between domestic life and love of

adventure, and each leg of her 29-day, circumnavigational journey. Asides in the margins discuss

common piloting procedures in Mock’s time and today. A glossary, a timeline, and several maps and

images put Mock’s accomplishments and travels in context and touch on several themes of geography.

This is a high-interest biography of a woman who is less of a household name than her idol, Amelia

Earhart, but no less gutsy and accomplished.

— Erin Anderson

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