Summary
Summary of 20 Hrs., 40 Min.
Who it’s for
For readers who love true adventure, early aviation and the first-hand voice of a pioneer, and anyone curious about Earhart before her later fame.
What this book is
In June 1928 a three-person crew flew a Fokker seaplane named Friendship from Newfoundland to Wales. One of them was Amelia Earhart, a Boston social worker and trained pilot. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. She was a passenger on the flight, not the pilot, and she says so plainly. This book is her own account of it, written soon afterward and published in 1928.
The title is the flying time, twenty hours and forty minutes. The book gives you the whole adventure. You see how she was chosen, who she flew with, the long wait for weather, the hours over the sea and the noisy welcome on the far shore. You also hear a young woman thinking about what flying meant in an age when it was still dangerous. Let us begin with the odd way the chance came to her.
In this summary
- 1A telephone call changes a quiet lifeFree
- 2She is a passenger, and says so
- 3Weather decides when the flight begins
- 4Twenty hours above cloud and sea
- 5Landing in Wales and meeting the crowds
- 6What flying means to Earhart
Key point 1 of 6
A telephone call changes a quiet life
Before 1928 Amelia Earhart was not a public figure. She worked at Denison House, a settlement house in Boston, where she helped immigrant families and their children. She flew in her spare time and held a pilot's license, which was rare for a woman then. Flying was her passion, but it was not yet her career.
The chance came by telephone. A representative of a wealthy backer asked whether she would like to join a flight across the Atlantic. The backer was Amy Guest, an American living in Britain, who had bought a plane for the crossing. She wanted the first woman to cross by air to be an American woman. Earhart was asked to meet people in New York who would judge whether she was suited to the role.
She describes her own surprise with a light touch. She did not think of herself as a hero, and she did not pretend otherwise. She weighed the risk, which was real, since several fliers had died trying to cross the ocean. Then she said yes.
This opening matters because it sets the tone of the whole book. Earhart presents herself as someone who was offered a rare opportunity and took it, not as someone who planned a record. The modesty is part of her charm, and it shapes how she tells everything that follows.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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