Mendelsohn to read from 'Amelia Earhart'

By Elizabeth Lucas
Daily Books Editor

When aviator Amelia Earhart's plane went down in the Pacific in 1937, her disappearance became a puzzling enigma, complete with searches and conspiracy theories.

PREVIEW
	Jane Mendelsohn Tonight at 7:30 Borders Free

Sixty years later, first-time author Jane Mendelsohn has explored what might have happened after the crash in her novel, "I Was Amelia Earhart."

"I wanted to finish this unfinished mystery, but in a more kind of metaphorical way," Mendelsohn said in an interview with The Michigan Daily.

"The fact that she's kind of dead and not dead, because she disappeared, created a tension I wanted to talk about," Mendelsohn said. "(The novel) is really about the possibility of living more than one life."

Mendelsohn said that she became interested in Earhart's story after reading an article about her.

"It mentioned that she'd had a navigator, and I hadn't known about that," Mendelsohn said. "The idea of two people traveling around the world, getting lost, disappearing - it seemed like kind of a dramatic idea."

In researching the book, Mendelsohn said she drew on several biographies and Earhart's own writings, in addition to looking at photos of Earhart and listening to tapes of her voice.

The resulting novel, however, only follows historical fact up to a point.

Mendelsohn begins by describing Earhart's attempted flight around the world with her navigator Fred Noonan, filling in biographical details and facts about the flight.

But after the plane crash, the novel illustrates the possibility that Earhart and Noonan survived, living on a desert island in the Pacific.

Though shorter than most novels, "I Was Amelia Earhart" is a polished debut.

Besides its intriguing premise and attention to its characters' psychologies, it is written in elegant, impressionistic prose.

Mendelsohn said her style was influenced by "everyone I've ever read," but primarily Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Marguerite Duras.

As might be expected, though, Mendelsohn had difficulty finding a publisher for her non-mainstream first novel.

"I tried to get an agent, but I couldn't," Mendelsohn said. "I was told the book was too literary ... no one would be able to sell it."

But through a strange twist of fate, the novel received more publicity than most best-sellers.

A New York woman picked up the novel in a bookstore, read it, and passed it on to her husband - radio host Don Imus. Imus spent the next week praising the novel on-air.

Mendelsohn said she'd rarely listened to talk radio before this event.

"My father called, and said that people had called him and told him Don Imus was promoting the book."

In this way, "I Was Amelia Earhart" received the notice it deserved. Though it provides one fascinating answer to the puzzle of Earhart's death, it leaves the mystery open for other solutions.

"(Earhart) is a great American heroine, maybe the great American heroine," Mendelsohn said.

"I think the fact that we don't know what happened - that her story's open to be finished by anyone, not just me - makes her a mythic figure."

Jane Mendelsohn, author of "I Was Amelia Earhart," will read from her work tonight at Borders.

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