"The plane slips from a spool of blue, stitches a confident loop in the sky. Willa stands by the hangar as the Moth roars above her head, growl of open throttle. The single figure in the rear cockpit waves as the plane flies low over the harbor airfield and then pulls up into a vertical climb. Up and up, the line so straight it could have been drawn with a ruler, could have been a harp string, the plane a note ascending."

Grace O'Gorman, the star-bright aviatrix of Helen Humphreys's debut novel, Leaving Earth, adores her Moth--a two-seat, open-cockpit biplane. It's the 1930s, and together they have wowed the world with stunts, solo long-distance flights, and other record-breaking trips. Glamorous "Air Ace" Grace feels most at home aloft, as opposed to down on Earth, in Toronto, with her husband. That, along with her competitiveness and affinity for fame, is why she's setting out to break the world flight endurance record. She teams up with a young female flyer, Willa Briggs, to circle Toronto for 25 days in August 1933.

In a spare yet warm style, Humphreys unfurls the pair's airborne life. She conjures the physical miseries it inflicts on the body--brought on by rain, cramped space, exhaustion--and makes the subtleties of that exhaustion clear as a cloudless sky. But beyond descriptions of physical discomfort is the emotional distress and elation Willa goes through, to which the author gives exquisite nuance. There's loneliness that forces introspection, yet joy washes over Willa, too--joy for a stripped-down life in the sky with Grace, with whom she is falling in love. Over the roar of the wind Grace and Willa develop a poetic sign language. Around this and around the experience of the sky, Humphreys winds Willa's highs and lows.

Following the Moth's flight is 11-year-old Maddy, whose father and Jewish mother work at a fading amusement park on the Toronto Islands. Maddy worships Grace and so naturally spends her August days tracking the circling biplane. Meanwhile her parents worry about work in the face of the depression and watch a growing anti-Semitism invade their home. From the earth and the sky Humphreys shapes a keen story about human frailty and potential, set when aviation was all about glamour, and World War II not so far away. Here, fear spreads and intimacy blooms. --Katherine Alberg


From Publishers Weekly
Toronto in 1933 provides the setting for this captivating first novel about two aviatrixes who attempt to set a new world endurance record by flying 25 days nonstop, circling the city in the open cockpit of their Moth biplane. Veteran barnstormer "Air Ace" Grace O'Gorman chooses novice Willa Briggs as a last-minute replacement for her ailing co-pilot. As days pass, mechanical failures, nasty weather and chronic fatigue threaten to curtail the flight, while the two pilots, hoarse from yelling over the roar of the wind, become close friends, communicating through sign and touch. Meanwhile, in a parallel earthbound plot, young Maddy Stewart, who idolizes Air Ace Grace, struggles to maintain her equilibrium when her Jewish mother, a carnival fortune-teller, becomes the target of a Nazi-inspired hate group. The two plots intersect when Maddy pulls the fliers from their beached aircraft. Inspired by an actual event that occurred in the skies over Miami, Fla., Humphreys has captured the courage and commitment of aviation's unsung pioneers, the sights and sounds of earth and sky and the somber mood of 1930s Toronto, all with a precise lyricism that amply demonstrates her talent as a poet. (Sept.) FYI: Humphreys has received the Governor's General Prize for her poetry, and the Vancouver Sun named her Best Young Canadian Novelist in 1997.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
During the Depression, two women pilot a plane in circles above Toronto, trying to break a record by staying aloft 25 days without landing. The effects on the women and on one little girl following them from below are beautifully detailed here, winning praise from major publications from the New York Times to the Washington Post. "An impressive debut," concluded LJ's reviewer. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, David Willis McCullough
It gives nothing away to say right now that Helen Humphreys delivers her perfect game.


From Booklist
Set in 1933, this is the story of two women and a young girl, all from different backgrounds yet each unknowingly bound by their love of flying. Willa lives in an abandoned hangar, spending every last cent and spare moment where she is most comfortable--soaring through the clouds. In a stroke of luck, Willa is chosen by Grace O'Gorman, aviatrix extraordinaire, as her copilot, in an attempt to break a record set one year earlier by her pilot husband. Jack O'Gorman, despite his bitterness at Grace's need to break the record he is too old to reclaim, will fly the refueling plane and is Willa and Grace's only contact to civilization. Seemingly forever stuck on the ground is young Maddy. Disappointed with her unglamorous, carnival-working parents, Maddy is convinced that she is the long-lost offspring of a fascinating Grace O'Gorman--if for no other reason than their shared dreams (and "clues" dropped from Grace's open-cockpit biplane). Humphreys is sure to entertain and even educate adventurists of all ages with her inspirational tale. Toni Hyde


From Kirkus Reviews
Canadian Humphreys debuts with the story of two women pilots who try, in August 1933, to break a record by staying aloft for 25 daysin a novel with plenty of period interest but less depthor heightof psychology and character than could be wished. Famous Grace OGorman, known as Air Ace Grace, sets out to break the in-air record now held by her over-the-hill husband Jackwhos not happy to see his wife trying to grab the last record hell ever set. But Grace pushes ahead, and, when her intended copilot breaks her wrist, takes on the younger and less-experienced Willa Briggs (Grace is 33, Willa 23).Up they go in a Moth DH60T, a one-engine biplane with wire struts and fabric skin, to begin 25 days of 10-minute circles over the neighborhoods, docks, and waters of Toronto. Once theyre up, Humphreys offers much thats of considerable interesthow the women refuel in the air, get food (both from a plane flown by the not-quite-to-be-trusted Jack), how they stay clean, go to the bathroom, communicate, keep from falling asleep. But theres unquestionably a sameness about thingsand the book turns to one complication and another for its density: on the ground is 12-year-old Maddy Stewart, whose infatuation for the famous flier is almost boundlesseven to the point of her imagining Grace to be her real mother, while her actual parents(Jewish mother a fortuneteller, nostalgic Scots father the operator of a merry- go-round)make their way through the homely, money-pinched days of a Depression Augustand feel the wrath of early Nazis, members of the Swastika Club, who maraud when it suits themas it does after Maddys prize-fighting uncle, Simon Kahane, wins over a boxer whos German. Everything about the airplanewith its 40-gallon gas tank and top speed of 80 mphis marvelously done, as are the locales of long-ago Toronto, but the tales and characters that keep the rest going just dont hold their altitude, declining toward the tones of a YA. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


New York Times Book Review
Beautiful in its reticence and insight.


The Times [London]
Expressed with acrobatic economy and grace.


Quill & Quire
A novel to remember, a novel of originality and considerable skill....an auspicious debut and a feat in itself.


Publishers Weekly
A captivating first novel....Humphreys has captured the courage and commitment of aviation's unsung pioneers.


Library Journal
An impressive debut.


David McCullough. The New York Times Book Review
It gives nothing away to say right now that Helen Humphreys delivers her perfect game.


Alison Anderson, The San Francisco Chronicle
Lyrical, moving—the experience of flight is palpable and poetic. Humphreys has an ethereal touch.


Carolyn See, Washington Post
Beautifully written, extremely controlled.


Robert Taylor, Boston Globe
An auspicious achievement...Humphreys has a gift for complex characterization, which she renders in a few, terse strokes.


New York Times Book Review
Beautiful in its reticence and insight.


Book Description
In 1933, two women aviators try for the longest flight-endurance record while, in Toronto below, war looms. Leaving Earth was Helen Humphreys's debut, and it brought the beauty of her poetry into the story of two women's love of flight and dream to excel, even if it took all their courage and strength and even their lives. Novice flyer Willa joins Grace, heroine of the skies, in what becomes an intimate journey of friendship. Yet the clouds that gather above are echoed by lurking dangers below for Maddy, a young fan of Grace's, and her Jewish mother and uncle. Anti-Semitism is spreading. Maddy's mother, a true fortune-teller, is beat up by thugs, and the swirl of events reverberates on earth and sky.


From the Publisher
"A novel so beautiful in its reticinece and insight, featuring characters so seemingly fragile and endangered, that readers may well find themselves becomig curiously protective..Helen Humphreys delivers her perfect game." DAVID WILLIS McCULLOUGH,The New York Times


About the Author
Helen Humphreys is the author of The Lost Garden and Afterimage, for which she won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. She lives in Kingston, Canada.

FROM THE PUBLISHER