West with the Night
In this beautifully written autobiography, Beryl Markham describes how at seventeen, when her father lost their farm and went to Peru, she chose to stay in Africa and began a highly successful career as a racehorse trainer. In her twenties, she gave up horses and started flying airplanes, becoming the first woman in East Africa to be granted a commercial pilot's license and becoming the first woman to fly the Atlantic from east to west. Born in England in 1902, Beryl Markham was taken by her father to East Africa in 1906. She spent her childhood playing with native Maruni children and apprenticing with her father as a trainer and breeder of racehorses. In the 1930s, she became an African bush pilot, and in September 1936, became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.
