Synopsis:
It’s 2009, and Kathy Begley is an empty-nester and the primary caretaker of her ailing eighty-seven-year-old mother. She also provides emotional support to her husband, Neil, who was laid off his job and is growing increasingly depressed. And she’s a nurse returning to work after two decades to quickly discover that the physician for whom she works engages in inappropriate workplace behavior.
When her mother, Peggy Mayfield, receives an invitation to attend a Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony in Washington, D.C., Peggy is certain a mix-up has occurred. But the invitation was indeed meant for Peggy. Kathy has stumbled upon an unfathomable family secret. Her mother wasn’t just a tempestuous wife and mother. She served as a Woman Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) during World War II, a fact she has kept hidden from her children.
In 1943, Peggy jumped at the opportunity to become a WASP, the first American women to fly military aircraft. She wore men’s uniforms, sweated, studied, trained . . . and soared. She also danced, drank, played poker, and fell in love with adventure, new friends, and her commanding officer, William Mayfield.
But Peggy is no longer that young, spunky pilot. Now she is filled with regret as she confronts the approaching end of her life. But Kathy is determined to make Peggy’s last months meaningful by ensuring that she receives long-overdue recognition for her contribution to the war effort, appreciating her anew, and forgiving her while there is still time.
In Eyes Turned Skyward, author Alena Dillon employs dual timelines to relate a story of a daughter discovering her mother’s past and explore the consequences of women’s contributions remaining unrecognized. She explores inheritance, reconciliation, unheralded female heroism, and the transformation of misogyny.
Review:
Alena Dillon is the author of two previous works of fiction, Mercy House, named a Library Journal Best Book of 2020, and The Happiest Girl in the World, which was a Good Morning America selection. She also penned a memoir of pregnancy and early parenting entitled My Body Is A Big Fat Temple and her work has appeared in The Daily Beast, LitHub, River Teeth, Slice Magazine, The Rumpus, and Bustle. She resides with her husband and children in Boston where she teaches creative writing.
Pilot Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran had an idea as the world was poised on the brink of war in 1939. If women were recruited and trained to serve as pilots flying non-combat missions, more male pilots would be available for combat missions and to perform other necessary duties. The Woman Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) ultimately boasted 1,074 members who tested, trained, and flew a whopping sixty million miles. But efforts to grant them military status were defeated in Congress, and all remained civilians lacking the recognition and benefits conferred upon veterans.
As Dillon’s Eyes Turned Skyward opens in 2009, Kathy Begley has secured a position as a nurse in a busy obstetrics-gynecology practice. Although she has been out of the workforce for twenty years, during which she raised a son and daughter, she maintained her licensure and kept up to date on medical advancements. Her husband, Neil, is a victim of America’s economic crisis. Having been laid off his job, he is moping around the house and growing more despondent as his prospects for another high-paying job dim. More than his personal hygiene is suffering. The stress is pushing the couple apart. Kathy is growing tired of Neil’s surprisingly chauvinistic attitude about money and her return to work, something she is looking forward to after spending two decades as a homemaker and mother. Neil is uncharacteristically resentful, which Kathy chalks up to pride and frustration that he has been unable to secure a job comparable to the one he lost.
Kathy’s three brothers all moved away, making her the primary caregiver for their mother, Peggy Mayfield, who is now eight-seven years old. Because their father, William, who died fifteen years ago, was a colonel, they moved numerous times growing up. Kathy marveled at how Peggy kept the family on track, setting up households in varied locales and getting the kids settled into new schools, in addition to being a gregarious hostess. But Peggy also had a dark side, and sometimes disappeared. To Kathy, her mother frequently seemed haunted. She “often looked at Kathy as if she saw somebody else and spoke to her as if she hoped a different voice might respond,” but Kathy never understood why.
Now Peggy is unable to continue living alone, and one of Kathy’s brothers pulls strings to secure a spot for her in an assisted living facility. The brothers insist that Kathy be the one to break the news to Peggy, but when she finally finds the courage, Peggy predictably, and vociferously, refuses to go. She also declines to undergo life-saving surgery, a decision that will eventually prove fatal. In a moment of weakness, Kathy agrees that Peggy can live with her and Neil, intending it to be a temporary arrangement.
Suddenly, Kathy finds herself trying to balance her responsibilities, including the demands of a new job and immediate realization that she is working for a man who engages in inappropriate commentary in the workplace related to both age and gender. With Neil unemployed, Kathy needs to work, and the combination of her age and having been out of the workforce for two decades make the prospect of finding another position especially challenging. She is also trying to hold onto her marriage and restrain her resentment about Neil’s reluctance to help more with household tasks now that she is working full-time while he remains at home. Still, she is happy that he has returned to woodworking, a hobby he enjoys and she encourages. She feels alone and isolated when navigating and responding to her mother’s needs, as well as the demands of her pushy, know-it-all brothers who want to manage the situation from a distance rather than show up and help in person.
This odyssey would release them changed, or it wouldn’t release them at all. But the cause was worthy. It was for democracy, for humanity, for goodness itself. And Peggy’s part was as critical as anybody else’s. Her country counted on her to take damaged planes into her arms and send them to the sky reborn. That was how she could better the world, so she would dedicate herself to that task — for the soldiers overseas, for those who had died.”
In a dual narrative, Dillon takes readers back to 1943. Peggy Lewis was just eight years old when her father, who ran a crop-dusting service, began teaching her to fly. So she was an experienced pilot when she learned that women were being trained to fly military aircraft. “She was called to higher altitude, where she could look down at the world where she never quite belonged” and determined to join the WASP, even if it meant going to Sweetwater, Texas, seven hundred miles from home and her beloved parents, for the seven-month training. Only eight percent of the applicants were accepted, but Peggy met all of the qualifications. She struggles to reach the one-hundred-pound weight requirement, but with clever assistance from Georgia, a fellow applicant, she barely manages to tip the scale at ninety-nine point seven pounds and convince the doctor to round it up to one hundred. She passes the written examination and the interview with Jackie Cochran herself, and is accepted into the program. She and the other young women study weather, aerodynamics, principles of flight, military courtesy, engines, navigation, Morse code, first aid, and instruments under the command of William Mayfield, a tough, no-nonsense leader. Peggy and Georgia quickly become best friends and confidantes, supporting each other and their fellow cadets during the intense program.
When Peggy receives an invitation to attend a Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony honoring the WASPs, Kathy is certain it was misdirected because she has no knowledge of her mother’s service. Returning to her mother’s home, she searches through Peggy’s belongings and is stunned when she finds evidence that Peggy was, in fact, a member of the elite corps. Why did Peggy keep her history as a pilot a secret from her children? Kathy is determined to find out.
Dillon’s characters are believable and their stories engrossing. Young Peggy and Georgia, in particular, are endearing as they meet and embark upon a mission that will change them forever. Like so many of the cadets, Peggy is away from home for the first time and discovers a sisterhood she has never previously experienced. Flying military bombers is vastly different than operating a crop-dusting plane, and Peggy finds it challenging, terrifying, and invigorating. She is determined to succeed and, along with the other women, is hopeful that the U.S. Government will acknowledge their service, but the WASP militarization bill is ultimately defeated in Congress by just nineteen votes. Readers accompany Peggy on a journey of accomplishment – after graduating, she is assigned to test repaired aircraft and sends three hundred and twenty planes back into combat – as well as heartbreak when a tragedy leaves her guilt-ridden. Another gut-punch is delivered in October 1944 when Peggy is informed the WASP program will be deactivated on December 20 of that year because the women’s “volunteered services are no longer needed. The situation is that if you continue in service, you will be replacing instead of releasing our young men.” The dismantling of the program, along with the lack of recognition of the WASP’s contributions, make Peggy bitter and her guilt about a tragic event during training inspires her silence about that part of her life. She marries her commanding officer and becomes a traditional housewife, supporting him in his military career. But “Peggy never learned how to fold her grief . . . and her revoked purpose into her life.” Nothing could change how hurt, angry, and frustrated she felt in those moments when she read the letter announcing the termination of the WASP program and her service. “They were civilian castoffs, chewed up and spit out. They were just women.” Looking into the future, “she saw down the narrowed corridor of her life all that she was allowed to be and all she wasn’t.”
Like her mother, Kathy is relatable and credible. She is a woman juggling numerous responsibilities while feeling unappreciated and undervalued. Dillon crafts a portrait of a woman at a cross-road. She knows that her mother’s life expectancy is shortened by her refusal to have surgery, and her steadfast refusal to attend the ceremony is Washington, D.C. confuses and aggravates Kathy until Peggy finally discloses what transpired all those years ago. Kathy of course understands her mother’s reticence to accept belated recognition (it “wouldn’t undo all the casseroles she’d baked and put her back in military uniform”) but insists that she will go to the ceremony, even if Peggy refuses and the acknowledgment of the WASP is inexcusably overdue.
With the truth revealed and Peggy living with Kathy and Neil, Kathy finally has the chance to get to know her mother for the first time and is determined to make the most of the opportunity while there is still time. In the process, she also gets to know herself better and becomes empowered in ways she has never been before. She finds the courage to assert herself in her relationship with Peggy, as well as demonstrate compassion to the mother she has always loved, but never understood. With knowledge comes an appreciation of her mother’s legacy and forgiveness for the times Peggy was emotionally distant and judgmental. Kathy realizes that Peggy was hardest on herself. She also summons the strength to speak up at work on behalf of herself and her female colleagues, and finds new satisfaction in her marriage.
Eyes Turned Skyward is a fast-paced, absorbing, and emotionally riveting story about a mother and daughter who are able to repair the fissures in their relationship as, individually, they attain an enhanced sense of self-worth, accomplishment, and place in the world. For Peggy, reckoning the emotional traumas of her past frees her to heal her relationship with her only daughter, while Kathy finds her voice and learns to express her desires and feelings, and insist upon being treated with respect. Dillon presents the story from an unabashedly feminist viewpoint, but never permits her narrative to lapse into a heavy-handed tone. Rather, she effectively explores her themes through the experiences of and challenges her characters face, allowing plot developments and her characters’ reactions to them to illustrate the various ways in which they are subjected to sexism and misogyny.
Ultimately, Eyes Turned Skyward is an homage to the brave women of the WASP who served their country selflessly on a volunteer basis, contributing to America’s victory. Because of outdated notions about the role of women in the military, and society as a whole, they were denied the recognition they deserved alongside male pilots. The WASP were finally granted military status when President Jimmy Carter signed the G.I. Bill Improvements Act of 1977, which even he initially opposed. Still, few people know that the WASP, culled from a candidate pool of 25,000 and an entering class of 1,830, flew a total of sixty million miles in seventy-eight different types of aircraft, delivering over 12,000 planes. “They towed, transported, tested, and taught. They broke barriers. . . . But they had been the ones to demonstrate possibility.” At the age of fifty-five, the fictional character of Peggy Mayfield and the real, heroic WASP finally, “quietly became war veterans.” And now, thanks to Dillon, more people know about their sacrifice and achievements.
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