Friday Feature Author Interview with Elise Cooper: Where the Sky Begins by Cindy Dees and Mary Wine

Book Description

In 1929, twenty daredevil women take to the skies in the most dangerous race of their lives.

Florence “Pancho” Barnes—heiress, rebel, and the most colorful pilot in America—can outfly, outswear, and outdrive any man. When Hollywood tries to turn the first-ever cross-country National Women’s Air Derby into a publicity stunt with movie starlets and their male “mechanics” doing the real flying, Pancho rallies the greatest female aviators of the era to fight back.

Alongside aviation legends Amelia Earhart, Louise Thaden, and Marvel Crosson, these fearless women demand the right to fly solo across 2,800 miles of treacherous terrain in primitive, fragile aircraft held together by glue and prayers. But as the race begins, sabotage strikes. Someone wants these women to fail—or worse.

As increasingly serious incidents mount, the pilots realize they’re not just racing for glory. They’re fighting for their lives and the future of women in aviation. United in their determination to finish the derby, they refuse to back down, watching each other’s backs as they barrel across the country in a white-knuckle race that will determine once and for all whether women belong in the skies.

From high-speed car chases to emergency landings, speakeasy showdowns to courtroom battles, Where the Sky Begins is a thrilling ride through one of aviation’s most dramatic chapters—a story of courage, sisterhood, and the unbreakable spirit of women who refused to be grounded.

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Elise’s Thoughts

Where The Sky Begins by Cindy Dees and Mary Wine will take readers on a thrilling ride emphasizing how women aviators displayed courage, sisterhood, and the unbreakable spirit of those who refused to be grounded. It is a reminder of how these women pilots in the late 1920s had to overcome insults, injustices, and obstacles simply because they were women. 

The story is based on the National Women’s Air Derby which took place in 1929. The derby was a race of 20 daredevil women flying from San Bernardino to Cleveland, although the authors concentrated on four: Florence “Pancho” Barnes, Amelia Earhart, Louise Thaden, and Marvel Crosson, But, as the race begins, sabotage strikes. Someone wants these women to fail, or worse die. As increasingly serious incidents mount, the pilots realize they’re not just racing for glory but fighting for their lives and the future of women in aviation. They band together in their determination to finish the derby. Undeterred by the dangerous obstacles thrown at them, they refuse to back down and watch each other’s backs.  

This exciting and extraordinary story was brought to the forefront in the novel by Dees and Wine. Readers will turn the pages to discover what could possibly happen next. The afterword is a bonus, explaining which parts are fictionalized and which are true. 

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Author Interviews

Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea for this story? 

Mary Wine: This is our third collaboration. I was in what’s called WHAM, which is an air museum in the Pacific Northwest. I was walking along in there with its hangars of old airplanes and vehicles and all kinds of bits of history. I enjoy prowling through old dinosaur bones of history. It’s something I really enjoy. I wandered around, and I found this ancient newspaper, and it had a headline that said, ‘Women are naturally handicapped by their dependence on men, and shouldn’t be in the cockpit.’ This was a headline that ran in one of the local papers. I knew I needed to dig deeper. I must know what dinosaur bone this is and when I got the whole idea, I ended up reaching out to Cindy.  

EC: What was the writing process? 

Cindy Dees: We sat down together and talked out the plot. I am a story structure geek, and Mary has massive experience in the TV and film industry and knows that story structure very well. And, of course, she has written dozens of historical novels and some contemporary stuff. We hammered out the plot. And the plot was kind of written for us by history. But because Mary has a lot of experience writing historical novels, she’s one of those historical writers that gets the historical facts correct. This is unusual, particularly in the romance industry. A lot of the facts are wildly wrong. But she is really gifted at saying, here are the facts. Where is the really good story among those facts? And so, she really, truly found the story. She told me, ‘I think these are the main characters whose points of view are really important,’ and I was like, ‘yep, I totally agree.’ And then we came up with kind of the skeleton of how we were going to cover the race. 

EC: How did you narrow down the cast of characters? 

Cindy Dees: There were multiple FBI agents and police officers involved in investigating the various acts of sabotage, but we don’t want a cast of a thousand. Let’s create one fictitious kind of amalgam FBI character for that. We also needed some race officials that are acting in bad faith. Let’s just create one.  

EC: What was true? 

Cindy Dees: We don’t have names of actual race officials that were doing some of the shenanigans but the shenanigans were absolutely happening including the arguments over trying to get the women to land at fields that they were going to crash on because the fields were too short. The argument of how close they were flying to the Mexican border. Those were real arguments. There was clearly bribery happening. I couldn’t tell you who bribed who but it was very clear there was bribery, buyoffs, and payoffs happening for the route of the race. Cities, industries, betters, and all kinds of people were paying to get the race to come through their town. So, Mary did a ton of that research and then we kind of talked through how to amalgamate a lot of that research.  

Mary Wine: There was a fair bit of discussion about how to open the book. It took us a bit to find openings and we tried a couple of different openings. We wrote three separate openings to the book. Both of us wanted this to be a filmable opening. An opening sequence that you see when you go to the movies that makes you sit your tail down and stop checking your text messages. I guided the opening to a nice big action scene, and wrote that scene.  

EC: Why the four pilots? 

MW: We decided because there were so many pilots in this race, over 20 of them, to narrow it down to the story happening between basically four of them. 

EC: How would you describe the four pilots? First, Pancho? 

CD and MW: They were similar in that they were all passionate about flying, and they were all certainly quite frustrated with the strictures being put on women as pilots. They were four of the strong voices as we did our historical research on the race that spoke out for organizing the women, pushing back against the things that were unsafe, sticking together, refusing to stop the race, and were four of the most dynamic, but that is where all the similarities end. Pancho Barnes was an heiress, big personality, bold personality, and a rebel at heart.  Pancho was one of the race organizers. And it’s why she could threaten the boycott that the pilots did. And she was the mouthpiece. She organized all the pilots, and they all agreed to the boycott to make sure only experienced pilots raced. She had that clout, because she was on the organizing committee. She has this big, loud personality. A lot of money and takes no guff. 

EC: What about the famous Amelia Earhart? 

CD and MW: She was a celebrated pilot, but ‘Lady Lindy’ didn’t fly in that flight over the ocean, that they gave her a ticket tape parade. And believe it or not, Amelia Earhart had a big problem with that. She was the one who called herself a sack of potatoes. She wanted to be in this race because she was going to be at the controls of the aircraft. It was very important to her. This derby was the moment that she got to be an aviator. She was 100% passenger on that famous flight. Amelia was really embarrassed and humiliated by that. The reality is, Amelia at that time was not a particularly experienced pilot. She had crashed a couple of airplanes. She was not considered to be one of the premier aviators of the day, although they all really respected her celebrity and they really appreciated the attention she was bringing to women pilots. They held her no ill will. But they all knew she wasn’t much of a pilot. This was her opportunity to really come out and step into her shoes as a real aviator. She had something to prove. She has a big chip on her shoulder, a big case of imposter syndrome, and then a big tragedy as the race begins, losing her longtime dear friend and mechanic, who died the night the race started in a plane crash. 

EC: What about Louise Thaden? 

CD and MW: She was by far the most accomplished aviator of all of them at that point. She was the best pilot, and all the women expected her to win the race going in. She was already doing some test flying. She had the first commercial pilot’s license. She was the consummate professional, poised, and self-contained. 

EC: Then there was the pilot of who died, Marvel Crosson? 

CD and MW: Marvel was young, adorably cute, charismatic, and charming. She was America’s sweetheart material. Even though everybody called Amelia Earhart, America’s sweetheart, because of the Atlantic flight that had already happened, Marvel was setting a lot of records at that time. She was doing altitude records. She recently had set the world altitude record before that race. She was a bush pilot in Alaska, which was known to be exceedingly dangerous. She was kind of the mascot of the race where everybody took her under their wing. Even though Pancho Barnes was only five years older than Marvel, she thought of her as a little sister, and protected her, looked out for her. Everybody felt very protective toward Marvel, even though Marvel was a hot stick pilot. 

EC: What role did Blanche Noyes play in the story? 

CD and MW: Blanche Noyes, a pilot and an actress was very important in teaching all the women how to be in front of the cameras, and how to give a good interview. Because of her indirectly the name “Powder Puff Derby” came about. The women pilots were getting ready for some press, and they all had brown and black sort of greasy mess all over their faces, sweaty, and then they would take their goggles off and they would have these white eyes staring at you, looking like a racoon. She taught them how to powder around their eyes, to even out their skin tone, so they didn’t look like freaks on camera. After the first race, they were all lined up on a stage and Blanche said ‘everybody, pull out your compacts and powder around your eyes.’ Will Rogers saw them doing it and he called it the ‘Powder Puff Derby.’ It stuck and infuriated the women because it was a derogatory term. It was like calling them petticoat pilots. It was another way of saying arm candy. 

EC: Why didn’t the women talk about the sabotage? 

CD and MW: They had a pact. They were going to be ladies and they were not going to whine because everybody was waiting for them to whine so they could print horrible headlines about, ‘oh, these poor little women just can’t take it. See, we told you.’ They had a pact that lasted until their dying breath. They never talked about the sabotage. The only time they ever voiced it was during the inquiry meetings. They formed a sisterhood. A scene in the book where Amelia Earhart, busted her propeller. They all waited for her new propeller instead of taking off as they were supposed to get a leg up and winning because she was grounded. They said, ‘We’re here to fly against each other. We are going to wait till you fix your plane, and then we’ll go again.’ 

EC: What do you want readers to get out of the story?  

CD and MW: How to face a challenge. I want people to understand that nothing feels like achievement. I think another really, important theme of the story is what is possible when you work together and you come together as colleagues, respect each other, and bring friendship with hard work. Never refuse to quit, because great things can be accomplished. And this race single-handedly opened the door for women pilots to follow. So, they were really breaking gender walls. 

EC: Cindy, did being a former Air Force pilot influence you? 

CD: Maybe I would never be a pilot if not for these women. I look at this and I think to myself, these women are amazing. They’re amazing just as they are. And I wanted to write them in full color. I wanted it to be more than a history book. I wanted to bring it out and say, ‘There’s big personalities here.’ These women plowed the road. I see doors where these women were met with walls. I wrote about the flying stuff. 

EC: Next book? 

CD: The next book on my horizon, will probably be the third Helen Warwick. It’s already sold for television, but that doesn’t mean anything, since I don’t control the timetable or money, all of that is way out of my control. 

MW: I am writing a psychological thriller but there is no release date. 

THANK YOU!!