Marian Graves

Marian is the main character in the novel. Her passion for flight guides her plotline and character arc. She and her twin, Jamie, are raised by their uncle, Wallace, in Missoula. She cultivates an affinity for flight at a young age when a husband-wife duo fly into town briefly to perform aeronautics. Marian acts with resolve early on, taking on bootleg jobs as a means for funds for flight lessons. She briefly marries Barclay MacQueen, a bootlegger, but leaves him and aborts their child en route to Alaska. There, she lives incognito and flies freelance. Despite her newfound freedom, Marian still years for a further sense of escape that she believes flight will afford her.

Marian enlists in a program for female pilots in WWII, where she meets and becomes lovers with another pilot, Ruth Bloom. This romance is short-lived, though, as Marian finds consolation for her...