West With the Night

North Point Press, 1983

Markham was born in England in 1902 and was taken by her father to East Africa in 1906. A horse breeder, adventurer and farmer, he chose East Africa `because it was new and you could feel the future of it under your feet.' Growing up against this backdrop of primitive Africa, and apprenticing with her father as a race horse breeder and trainer, she turned to aviation. From 1931 to 1936 she carried mail, passengers and supplies in her small plane to the remote corners of the Sudan, Tanganyika, Kenya and Rhodesia. In September 1936 she became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, from England to a crach-landing in Nova Scotia some 21 and a half hours later. Markham died in 1986 at her home in Nairobi, Kenya...