Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) captured the hearts of America after becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928. Nine years later, her disappearance on an around-the-world flight brought her extraordinary life to an abrupt and mysterious end.

Based on a decade of archival research through Earhart’s letters, journals, and diaries, and drawing on interviews with the aviator’s friends and relatives, East to the Dawn provides the most authoritative and richly textured account of both Earhart’s record-setting aviation career and her personal life: her early years with her grandparents, her experiences as a nurse and social worker, her famous marriage to publisher George Putnam, and her secret affair with Gene Vidal, head of the Bureau of Air Commerce.

With 16 pages of photographs
 

Praise for East to the Dawn

“East to the Dawn is a fully realized portrait of a truly remarkable woman.”
—Los Angeles Times

“The mountain of new material it marshals guarantees East to the Dawn a permanent place on the shelf of Amelia Earhart references.”
—New York Times Book Review

“The single best book that we now have on Earhart’s life.”
—Washington Post Book World

 

Susan Butler—a former journalist for the New York Times—worked for ten years on East To the Dawn, drawing on numerous sources including: the Earhart papers at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library; interviews with Fay Gillis Wells, one of the last living members of Earhart’s Ninety-Nines; interviews with distant relatives of Earhart; access to never-before-revealed family papers; as well as uncovering the biography of Earhart’s friend Janet Mabie, lost for over fifty years. She lives and works in Central Florida.