Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Marie Arendt
Categories
Memoirs

FLY GIRL

Ann Hood

An entertaining and fascinating memoir of "gifted storyteller" (People) Ann Hood's adventurous years as a Trans World Airlines flight attendant in the 1970s.

In 1978, in the tailwind of the Golden Age of air travel, flight attendants were the epitome of glamor and sophistication. Fresh out of college and hungry to experience the world, Ann Hood joined their ranks. She carved chateaubriand in the first-class cabin, found romance on layovers in London and Lisbon, and walked more than a million miles in high heels, smiling as she served thousands of passengers. She flew through the start of deregulation, an oil crisis, massive furloughs, and a labor strike. As the airline industry changed around her, Hood began to write - even drafting snatches of her first novel from the jump-seat. She reveals how the job empowered her, despite its roots in sexist standards. Packed with funny, moving, and shocking stories of life as a flight attendant, FLY GIRL captures the nostalgia and magic of air travel at its height, and the thrill that remains with every takeoff. Ann Hood is the author of the best-selling novels The Book That Matters Most, The Knitting Circle, The Red Thread and Somewhere Off The Coast of Maine. Her memoir, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, in which she shares her personal story of losing her 5 year old daughter Grace in 2002, was a New York Times Editor's Choice and named one of the top 10 non-fiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Paris Review, O Magazine, and Real Simple. The recipient of a Best American Travel Writing Award, among other honors, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Available products
Book Published 2022-05-03 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

At first blush, Fly Girl is a charming, layered memoir about Ann Hood's life as a flight attendant who knew the industry in its glory days - and its-not-so-glorious days post-deregulation. But it's also something much more, nothing less than a manifesto calling us to embrace joy and adventure, however we define them. I have always loved Ann's stories and now I know why she has so many: She has lived, in the best, fullest sense of that word. She can't make the sun stand still, but, boy does she make it run.

Winning and compulsively readable, Fly Girl is like a first-class ticket to the sadly-bygone days when air travel was stylish, sexy and deliciously rarified. What a pleasure to see another side of this best-selling author - the small-town girl with a passion for adventure who earns her flight-attendant's wings while decidedly discovering her own.

Colorful anecdotes make for an entertaining memoir of travel and self-discovery.

Fly Girl soars: Ann Hood's memoir of her experiences as a flight attendant is a love letter to the years when flying was a dream - and the 747s ruled the skies. I was catapulted back in time and savored every second and every story from 35,000 feet in the air.

In this warm and engaging memoir, Ann Hood captures the heady thrills as well as the grueling realities of life as a flight attendant during the Golden Age of air travel. Over eight years, Hood walked a million miles, explored far-flung cities, and learned invaluable lessons that shaped her as a writer and a person. A brisk history lesson, an affectionate homage, and a thoughtful critique of the airline industry, Fly Girl soars.

As a young woman in the late 1970s, Ann Hood's determination to seek an adventurous life propelled her into this contradictory profession. Now she flies readers through that era - of flight, American history, and her own life - and into the present with warmth, humor, and insight in a memoir that sparkles.

Fly Girl is a sheer pleasure. A hilarious and often moving look back at a bygone era and a young woman's coming of age.