Except I’ve already been replaced by Frankie, it seems. The beagle curls in a happy ball between us, breathing twice for each breath of ours, tiny heart beating.

I take the early ferry to Oahu the next morning, piloted by Leo. Frankie comes with us; Leo says she might as well learn the trade early. I fall asleep in the deckhouse, and Leo wakes me when we dock. A taxi sits nearby, ready to carry me to Hickam Air Force Base, where I’ll board a military transport plane to the Philippines, and then another to the Chinese mainland. Leo knows how anxious I am about these flights, far more than about taking photographs of General Mao’s brutal advance. He carries my suitcase to the taxi and tells me he tucked a bottle of Olle’s bourbon into my satchel.

“Send telegrams,” he says, “so we know you’re still alive.”

I nod. He kisses me good-bye. As I climb into the taxi and look out the window, I notice the other passengers glance curiously at him, their captain who stands with his back to the ocean, staring at this woman who’s leaving him. You can tell by his expression that he’s afraid she’s not coming back.

I tell the driver to stop the car. I open the door and walk back to Leo. I whisper something in his ear, and whatever I’ve said—I’m not saying what—I think it helps. His expression turns awestruck and full of hope. We kiss again like we mean it, and I return to the car, and the car continues on its way. I stare through the back window. He lifts his hand and waves, and that’s the last I see of him before we turn the corner, a single image printed on the film of my memory: Leo’s tanned hand spread against the blue sky.

Author’s Note

This book isn’t intended as a veiled biography of Amelia Earhart, and certainly not as a theory regarding her famous disappearance over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. But Earhart’s story has fascinated me since I was a girl, and a few years ago I posed myself a certain What if? that eventually reimagined itself and grew into Her Last Flight.

As a result, Irene Foster can best be described as a composite character, borrowing certain physical and biographical details from Earhart but also from some of the other extraordinary women and men at the frontiers of aviation. My research took me down all kinds of rabbit holes as I investigated those three extraordinary decades between the Wright brothers and Earhart’s disappearance, from the technological details of manned flight to the psychology of its pioneers, to the geography of the vast Pacific Ocean. (All of the locations mentioned are real, except Ki’ilau, which is based on the privately held island of Ni’ihau off the coast of Kauai.)