Historical Mystery Features Unsung Heroines of WWII

Bast Press announces the release of a World War II mystery, ‘The Woman in the Wing’, on September 15, 2008. It stars Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) and Rosie the Riveters in a fictional suspense thriller set in a wartime defense plant.

The December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor ended all discussion as to whether the United States would enter World War II. The result brought unexpected changes to America, especially in the lives of women. Two hundred thousand enlisted in the military and twelve million, many who had never worked outside of their homes, took jobs in factories, offices, and as civilian workers on military bases.

The new supply of labor brought unprecedented increases in, among other things, airplane and ship production. Eighty-five hundred planes a month rolled out of factories, twice the number previously manufactured in an entire year. Women factory workers collectively referred to as ‘Rosie the Riveter’ built many of those planes. An even lesser known fact, both then and today, is that more than half of those aircraft arrived at their destination ferried by civilian women of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, the WASP.

In ’The Woman in the Wing’, a suspense thriller, Charlotte Mercer is a WASP trainee who hopes to fly for her country. Charlotte’s career nearly ends before it begins when an army major removes her from training after she refuses his proposition to do something other than fly. Ordered to work at a defense plant with the FBI, she meets her new riveting partner, agent Eleanor Frazier. Char’s job description changes from pilot to Rosie the Riveter to undercover agent after a ring of German spies. The dedicated pilot never gives up hope of earning her silver wings, even as she makes a perilous flight of her own with a Nazi demolitions expert holding a gun to the back of her head.

The Woman in the Wing
Available September 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9723541-6-5
268 pages/Trade Paperback/$14.95

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