Being Mrs. Lindbergh

The wives of famous men must sometimes feel invisible. That was not quite true of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of Charles Lindbergh, once the most celebrated human being on the planet. She was his copilot on many record-setting flights and the first American woman to fly a glider by herself. She wrote several books, most notably The Gift from the Sea. She got much more attention than she ever wanted after the kidnapping and murder of her first-born son. She had to wear a disguise to go shopping or to a play, even before the age of television.

Melanie Benjamin, whose insightful biographical novels are among the best being written these days, covers all this and more in The Aviator's Wife (2013). One might think it would be difficult to make a cohesive story that stretches all the way from their first meeting, soon after Lindbergh's solo flight to Paris in 1927, to his death in 1974, yet Benjamin pulls it off nicely.

Like everyone else, young Anne never thinks Charles would ever choose her. Elizabeth, her more beautiful older sister, is the one the Morrow family pushes in front of the hero when he comes to visit. Yet he sees in Anne someone more like himself — someone intelligent, orderly, reserved and adventurous. Yet Anne isn't quite the female version of himself Charles imagines her to be.

She yearns for a more traditional family, with husband and wife living in the same home and sleeping in the same bedroom, surrounded by their loving children. Yet Charles always has somewhere else he has to be and often leaves for months at a time, then is distant even when he comes home. His children admire him, yet also fear him. He is demanding and rarely lets his feelings show.

Anne doesn't learn until near the end of his life that her husband has other families in other countries, although by this time she has already been involved in a longtime adulterous relationship with the family doctor.

As in her other novels, the authors sticks close to the facts, filling in the blanks, such as those regarding emotions and private conversations, to build her story.

The author doesn't back away from the aviator's admiration for Hitler in the 1930s, his negative attitude toward Jews and his strong opposition to America's involvement in the war. Anne, like Melanie Benjamin herself,  doesn't stand behind everything Charles Lindbergh does or doesn't do, believes or doesn't believe. Yet she never stops regarding him as a hero.