North to the Orient: An Adventure in Aviation

The realization of her long-developing vocation as a writer, Anne Morrow Lindbergh's first book chronicles a 1931 survey expedition undertaken with her husband Charles - whose solo flight from New York to Paris four years earlier had made him the most celebrated figure of the era. Together, the couple explored aerial routes to the Orient, entailing 7,100 miles in flight to Japan and China via Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. Flying was still an exotic adventure, for aviation was as yet in its infancy, and the narrative interest of ascent itself is enhanced by the image of hero and wife aloft together, making camp as they travel in some of the remotest and least inhabited portions of the globe. Yet as vivid as Anne Morrow Lindbergh's account of their journey is, her book also probes a depth of emotion and discovery that lifts the book far beyond its origins as a travelogue. Written in the aftermath of the terrible ordeal of her infant son's kidnapping and murder, North to the Orient is an adventure story imbued with a philosophical and imaginative richness that makes it a compelling and poignant work of literature.Anne Morrow Lindbergh was born in 1906. After her graduation from Smith College, she married the aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1929. In addition to North to the Orient, her books include Listen! The Wind, Gift from the Sea, and several acclaimed volumes of diaries and letters. She died in Passumsic, VT in 2001."North to the Orient is that rarest of all 'travel books,' one which 'reveals.' It reveals not only the spirit of the places they saw and the people that the Lindberghs' met, but it also reveals Mrs. Lindbergh . . . and the revelation is a rich and lovely one."?Chicago Daily Tribune"One's first impression of this book is that Anne Lindbergh writes so well she must not stop."?The Atlantic"She has the seeing eye and the memory that relates new things to the remembered old; her story has a personal flavor and charm that set it apart from most chronicles by aviators, explorers, soldiers and other people of action whose forte is?just action."The New York Times"Anne Lindbergh has a sense of drama, and she knows how to tell a story, to tell it with simplicity of style and an exquisite feeling for words. Every page is a pure delight."?Books"The experience of that unique trip . . . has been passed through the sensitive personality of a poet and expressed in terms of literature."?Horn Book