Today, I’m recommending Circling the Sun by New York Times bestselling author Paula McLain. Hailed by NPR as one of the best books of the year for 2015, Circling the Sun transports readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s, bringing to life the fearless and captivating Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator and Kenya’s first female horse trainer, who is caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, who as Isak Dinesen wrote the classic memoir Out of Africa.
Brought to Kenya from England as a child and then abandoned by her mother, Beryl is raised by both her father and the native Kipsigis tribe who share his estate. Her unconventional upbringing transforms Beryl into a bold young woman with a fierce love of all things wild and inherent understanding of nature’s delicate balance. But even the wild child must grow up, and when everything Beryl knows and trusts dissolves, she is catapulted into a string of disastrous relationships.
Drawing inspiration from Markham’s memoir, West with the Night, Paula McLain masterfully weaves together Beryl’s real life exploits with her own brand of storytelling to create and immensely captivating fictional account of one of the 20th centuries most fascinating women.
McLain’s powerful tale reveals the extraordinary adventures of a woman before her time, the exhilaration of freedom and its costs, and the unwavering tenacity of the human spirit.
Check out Circling the Sun and other great works of fictional biography like it at the Sioux City Public Library.
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