Happy birthday to my favorite female pilot, Amelia Earhart! She was born on July 24, 1897, making this the 116th anniversary of her birth.

Although Earhart herself doesn’t appear in The Chance You Won’t Return, she’s an important figure in the novel. I’ve mentioned before that I first got the idea for the book when the line “My mother thinks she’s Amelia Earhart” popped into my head. As I started writing, I found that Earhart was really the perfect historical figure to have permeating the novel. She was bold and smart and talented and pushed major boundaries for women. But she was also very much a public figure in that she had a carefully crafted public persona, much like a celebrity today would have. That, along with her disappearance, makes her such an enigmatic figure and one we always want to know better. In the same way, much of The Chance You Won’t Return is about the secrets we carry and how we function in our public and private lives.

More about the book and Amelia to come, but in the meantime, make sure to check out these fun Amelia Earhart links:

• The Official Website of Amelia Earhart
• The George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers at Purdue University Libraries
• Happy Birthday, Amelia Earhart: The Iconic Aviator on Drive, Education, Religion, and Human Nature
• Amelia Earhart’s Palm Print
• Aviation: Boardman, Earhart & Grayson

(image via Boston Public Library)