Relentless Pursuit: A Pair of Wings by Carole Hopson

BY LEE ANN ECKHARDT SMITH

Carole Hopson’s debut novel, A Pair of Wings (Holt, 2024) was twelve years in the making. During that time, the author tried three different approaches to telling the story of Bessie Coleman, the extraordinary pioneer aviatrix.

Among her many achievements, Bessie Coleman was the first American to earn a civilian aviation brevet (certificate) from the French Federation Aeronautique Internacionale (FAI). This was something she had to do because, being African American and female in the 1920s, nobody in the United States would train her to fly. So she took three years of Berlitz night school classes, became fluent in French and earned her brevet – a full two years before Amelia Earhart.

Author Hopson explains how her approach to telling Bessie’s story evolved. She first used an omniscient narrator but, she says, “a distant observer did not move the reader to the emotional depths nor the breathtaking heights Bessie reached.” She then tried the voice of Bessie’s best friend Norma. However, “Norma could not explain lift, Bernouli’s Principle, and Newton’s third law of motion, to a fifth grader to describe how an airplane flies. Bessie could.” From there, she says, the choice of first-person narrative was a natural evolution. “I felt like it had to happen in order for the reader to understand the magnitude of the challenges that Coleman had to overcome in order to accomplish her goals,” she says.

One of the challenges Hopson faced when writing this book was finding historical records about Bessie. “I wish that there had been a textbook reference to Coleman’s monumental achievements,” she says. “I had gone to college and graduate school, and yet Bessie Coleman’s name never appeared in any course book that I had read. I found this mournful beyond measure.” Coleman’s name did not even appear in the FAI logs on the date she received her ground-breaking license. “I was so disappointed,” Hopson tells us. However, “because Coleman had not set any records, her name was not recorded. The FAI was the keeper of records: how far, how long, how high, but not who was simply first.”

author photo by Derrick Davis

Hopson also had to add new skills to those she’d developed when earning a science degree and working in journalism. “We are trained to be objective, to look at facts, analyze data, but not inject opinion,” she explains. “Yet, one must form an opinion when writing about a historical person whom you grow to love. In fact, if you don’t form a strong emotional tie to an individual, you can’t create the connection and the same response for the reader.”

The author hopes that readers will find much to connect with and respond to when reading Bessie’s story. “I hope modern readers realize the only thing in the way of their dreams are their own limitations,” she states. “I hope people will learn of Coleman’s work and decide that it is time – time for their own second act, time to act, time to wake up. Sometimes people tell me that they have a dream and I think that is good, but it is first order, because the difference between a dream and a goal is a date. Coleman understood this. She became undeniable because she was relentless. She gave dates and definition to her work and she ran after her passion as if her life depended on it, and it did.”

Hopson herself followed a childhood dream of flying, and is now a 737 Captain with United Airlines. After being in the industry for a while, she realized that “a century after Coleman shattered the sky, and expectations, less than 150 Black women fly for a living.” In response, Hopson founded the Jet Black Foundation, with the goal of sending 100 women of African descent to flight school by 2035. She explains that for her, “there is something about serving the legacy that Coleman started that has become an irresistible, magnetic pull.”

As a writer, there are other stories Hopson would like to tell in the future. “I am drawn to stories of African Americans who are buried beneath the weight of obscurity,” she reveals, “hidden because race and gender discrimination has kept their stories camouflaged as the work of others. I am drawn to swashbuckling men and women, who identify their own super power and who allow the strength of their secret gift to increase as the quest becomes more and more difficult to pursue. They turn on the afterburners when it is time to save something they believe in. The notion that an underdog rises from the muck is seductive to any storyteller.”

About the contributor: Lee Ann Eckhardt Smith’s passion for history and storytelling has driven her writing career. She is the author of two acclaimed non-fiction history books: Strength Within: the Granger Chronicles (Baico, 2005) and Muskoka’s Main Street: 150 Years of Courage and Adventure Along the Muskoka Colonization Road (Muskoka Books, 2012). She’s written articles for many magazines and newspapers, primarily about how to write family history and memoir. She is currently working on her fourth collection of photographs and poetry, inspired by the beauty she finds in her everyday world. Find out more at her website.