West with the Night

Walking down a tree-lined block in the East 80s the other day I passed a brownstone with a pretty patio fronting the street.  There on a small table someone had left an open book.

Always curious about what others are reading,  I looked through the wrought iron gate to see the title — it was Beryl Markham’s 1942 memoir,  West with the Night.  You may know of Markham,  the British-born Kenyan aviator who in 1936 became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

A free spirit,  Markham defied the conventions of her day that dictated what a woman could and could not do.  In West with the Night she tells her remarkable story against the backdrop of her beloved Africa,  with it’s glorious landscapes and vibrant peoples,  and all it’s colonial failings.

When I first read the book I was fascinated with Markham’s adventurous life,  but it was her writing that knocked me out.  In fact you can see in my blog profile that when I started writing this blog I listed West with the Night as one of my favorite memoirs.

Anne Tyler,  another fine writer,  has said,  “We read so that we can live more than one life in more than one time and place.”

So I am sure whoever left that book on that Manhattan patio is thousands of miles away by now,  flying through the vast African sky in the cockpit with Beryl Markham.

Dana Susan Lehrman