Great Circle

In British Columbia in June 1932, Marian flies Jamie into Canada on one of her smuggling flights. She told Macqueen that she has forgiven him, though she has begun to make secret plans. In Canada, Marian leaves Jamie with a woman named Geraldine, with whom she stayed when she first flew over the ocean a year before. Marian departs quickly in the hope that Macqueen will not notice her absence. 

In 1932, Macqueen finds Marian’s replacement diaphragm. He beats her and breaks it. He threatens to burn her plane—and Marian threatens suicide if he does so. She becomes “hollow and inert and uncanny” (249) when he rapes her, attempting to impregnate her. Marian does not become pregnant. One day, Caleb delivers her a message from Jamie, whose health is improving. Marian reads the letter and learns about Jamie’s relative success as well as his romantic attachment to Geraldine.

By 1933, airplane technology is rapidly advancing and records are frequently being broken by men and women, though some die in the attempt. Stuck in Montana, Marian is cut off from the aviation world and a “great blankness” (252) settles over her. In Vancouver, Jamie ends his fledgling relationship with Geraldine and moves into a new house. He paints and begins drinking with his artist friends. In Montana, Marian is pregnant at the age of 19. She has become thin and withdrawn but hides her condition from Macqueen. With prohibition about to end, Macqueen and his men wonder what they will do. One night, while he is away on business, Marian sneaks out of the house and flies her plane away from Missoula. She throws her wedding ring out of the window and into a lake.

Marian goes to Jamie in Vancouver, covering her tracks to avoid being followed. She searches for some way to abort her pregnancy; otherwise, she fears she will be tied to Macqueen forever. Jamie has fallen in love with a sculptor named Judith, and he wonders whether he should tell his sister. He is angry with Macqueen, though does not know what to do with his anger. To obtain an abortion, Jamie sends Marian to visit Sarah’s mother in Seattle. His instincts are correct, and Mrs. Fahey takes Marian to a doctor. After the procedure, Marian posts a long letter to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. The next day, she books passage on a ship to Alaska.

In 1934, Marian finds work in Alaska as a pilot under the name Jane Smith. She rents a small house on the edge of the town and sleeps with a rifle by her bed in case Macqueen comes for her. Jamie moves into a cleaner but smaller apartment while Judith travels in Europe. While she is gone, Jamie has a string of girlfriends.

By 1935, Amelia Earhart is a famous record-breaking pilot. Marian flies everything from food to corpses to pregnant women on the way to the hospital. The conditions are tough for pilots in Alaska, and Marian learns new ways to survive. Nowadays, she knows plenty of dead pilots. Inspired by the photographs of the curvature of the Earth taken from a balloon, Jamie paints in a fresh style. His paintings sell, and a Japanese businessman commissions him to paint the businessman’s daughter. Judith returns, accompanied by a French husband. Jamie paints Sally Ayukawa after being told that her father’s businesses are not dissimilar to Macqueen’s, particularly in terms of their legality. Sally is going to Japan, soon to be married, and the portrait is for her parents to remember her. Over the course of several sittings, Jamie falls for her. During the final sitting, he slips her a note and asks to see her again. Three days later, strong men appear at his apartment. They are sent by Macqueen and demand to know Marian’s location. They beat him, but he has nothing to tell them. The next day, Jamie plans to flee the city. He takes the finished portrait to the Ayukawa house to get paid. Mr. Ayukawa reacts with shock: Sally ran away, and they found Jamie’s address in her room. 

Hadley reaches out to Redwood. Though he seems to avoid her, he proposes that Hadley meet his mother. Carol Feiffer is the author of the biography on which Hadley’s film is based. When she meets Hadley, Carol is excited and earnest. Also in attendance are the Day brothers, Carol’s friend Adelaide Scott, and a young woman named Leanne who Hadley decides is Redwood’s girlfriend. Soon, Hugo arrives, and the group sits for a dinner outside. Adelaide describes how she met Marian when she was a young child. However, she does not remember much about Marian. After the meal, Adelaide confides in Hadley that she may be able to provide something more about Marian, though she did not want everyone else to know. 

In the late 1930s, the famous pilot Charles Lindbergh publicly sympathizes with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. When Macqueen is convicted and imprisoned for tax evasion, Marian begins to use her real name again. She owns her own plane and runs her own transport business. Out of curiosity, she flies far north and sees the beauty of the bleak Arctic nights. She writes to Caleb and discovers that Jamie has left Vancouver to live in the mountains and become an “art hermit” (273).

In 1937, Jamie visits Wallace. By now, Wallace is gravely ill and struggling to remember details about his past. Jamie explains being an “art hermit” (273): He lives in a cabin in the mountains after the two men came to his apartment and beat him. However, they were not Macqueen’s men. Rather, they were representatives of Mr. Ayukawa, and they were searching for his daughter. Eventually, Mr. Ayukawa paid Jamie for the portrait. Now, Jamie has plans to paint, “incorporating the curvature of the earth” (275). Five days later, Wallace dies and leaves everything he has to Jamie and Marian.

When Caleb brings news about Wallace to Marian, they rekindle their relationship. Lying in bed, he tells her about a night when—as a child—he nearly froze to death after leaving his mother’s home and wandering the woods. Marian tells him about her escape from Macqueen. Caleb reveals that he has a letter for Marian from Macqueen. She reads Macqueen’s emotional plea for forgiveness and then throws the letter in the fire. Macqueen also mentions that Sadler and Kate have married; he hopes that they find more happiness than he found with Marian. After Caleb leaves, Marian feels lonely. She takes a string of lovers but forgets most of them. She writes back and forth with Jamie, hoping that they can have a fresh start. Amelia Earhart dies in a plane crash while attempting a new record, and, for years, many people hope that she somehow survived.

In 1938, Jamie burns his latest paintings. They were imitations of Wallace’s work, but they never satisfied Jamie’s ambitions. However, he discovers that one of his paintings won a prestigious prize in Seattle. He is expected to attend the award ceremony in a month’s time. During an overnight stay in Cordova, Marian has an affair with a woman, an unmarried heiress. She burns a letter from Macqueen without reading it while tensions in Europe seem to escalate inevitably toward war. Lindbergh becomes “a mouthpiece for the Germans” (280) and spreads Nazi propaganda in America. He will eventually be shamed into silence by the events at Pearl Harbor and will never properly rebuild his public image.

Jamie attends his awards ceremony and agrees to paint a series of large murals. Then, he meets with Marian in Vancouver. Their interaction is a little stilted at first as they agree to see Wallace’s house and discuss the seemingly inevitable war. Jamie delivers the news that Macqueen is dead; the rumors suggest Sadler killed him. However, Marian wonders whether Caleb is the real assassin. 

Hadley is contractually obligated to attend a conference in Las Vegas to promote her most recent Archangel film. As she thinks about seeing Oliver for the first time since their break-up, she messages Redwood. He is unclear when discussing the nature of his relationship with Leanne. When Hadley mentions that she misses Redwood, he does not respond. The next day, Hadley meets with Oliver. He reveals that he is already seeing a new person, the 17-year-old who replaced Hadley’s role in the Archangel franchise. During a press conference, Hadley delivers empty platitudes about the end of her relationship with Oliver while Alexei watches. Later, Alexei offers to take her for a drink, and they go back to Hadley’s room. They have sex, and, as Alexei leaves her room, a guard catches them kissing on a security camera. He sells the footage to the press. 

Almost three years after Marian met Jamie in Vancouver, World War II eventually reaches Alaska. The building of military bases in Alaska leads to Marian subcontracting government work. She visits Jamie, whose art career is taking off, and Caleb, who is now seeing a woman. She argues with Caleb, accusing him of being “just as conventional as anyone” (293). When they are both upset, she tries to comfort him and then leaves.

Two months later, Jamie hosts an art exhibition in Seattle and wonders whether he will meet Sarah Fahey again. He spots her across a crowd and waits to see how she will react to one of his paintings. Their reunion is nervous and a little awkward, though she heaps praise on his work. He credits her with his becoming an artist, saying that she gave him “a sense of possibility” (297). Then, she introduces Jamie to her husband, Lewis Scott, who invites him to dinner to meet their two sons. Jamie accepts the invitation. The next day, as Jamie reflects on his choice, he hears the news that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. Unsure what to do, Jamie goes to Sarah’s house ahead of schedule. He spots his portrait of Sarah hung on the wall. Neither Lewis nor her sons are at home. Sarah is afraid and angry at the latest news. Through her anxieties, Jamie realizes that he may well be sent to war. They catch up on their lives; Sarah admits that her life would be easier if their “summer was just a sweet little rite of passage” (303). The idea of an affair with Jamie, she says, would only bring them both pain, as she will never leave Lewis. Their meeting ends acrimoniously, but Jamie is thankful that he found some sort of resolution to their romance.

Four months later, Marian interviews for a war program that recruits female pilots to transport warplanes. Jamie is still debating whether he should sign up for the war. Marian is recruited by Jaqueline Cochrane, a glamorous female aviator who dragged herself up from crushing poverty to be one of America’s most famous pilots. The two women bond over their similar life stories. Marian is sent to Montreal for an evaluation but is warned that she will need to dress in a more feminine fashion to navigate male expectation. Two months later, the Army in Montreal evaluates Marian’s flying skills and physical health. While her fellow pilots are “basically all right” (316), she becomes good friends with a woman named Ruth Bloom. Ruth is a navigator who quickly deduces Marian’s character, and they become good friends by the time they ship out to Britain. Ruth and Marian continue to bond on the voyage. In Britain, all the lights are dimmed or blacked out to hide from German bombers.

In August 1942, Caleb and Jamie meet. Jamie cuts Caleb’s long braided hair as Caleb prepares to enlist. Afterwards, they drink, and Jamie discusses his natural aversion to violence, wondering how it would work in the military. Caleb offers to take him hunting to give him some experience. That evening, Jamie reflects on a job opportunity that Sarah sent him: The military needs “artists to document the war” (323). While hunting the next day, Jamie cannot bring himself to kill an elk.

Marian goes through pilot’s training in London, learning about the more technical aspects of flying that she never learned from Trout. She socializes in bars and cinemas with Ruth. One night while on fire watch together, they talk about their families. Ruth talks about her husband, Eddie, and Marian talks about her brother as they lay together in a cot under the same blanket. Later that month, Marian learns that Jamie will be an artist in the navy. She feels a sense of dread for Caleb and Jamie, but she sets this aside, as there is “nothing she could do for either of them” (330).

By winter, Marian realizes that she is in love with Ruth. She is shocked—not so much that she loves a woman but that she can love anyone after her marriage to Macqueen. She fears that she cannot explain her feelings to Ruth, as Ruth will reject her, and she does not want to be “trapped by love again” (331). Marian’s problem is solved for her: She is promoted and sent away from Ruth. One day, Ruth passes through Marian’s base. They share an awkward conversation and Marian quickly makes her excuses to leave. One day, she is required to fly a Spitfire. Marian pushes the plane higher than it is meant to go, to the edge of space. She feels discombobulated afterward, and, as she walks into the canteen at the airbase, she sees Ruth again. Ruth explains that her husband, Eddie, is now in Britain. As Ruth departs, Marian wants to tell her everything, but the words become stuck in her throat.