Great Circle

Shipstead’s sweeping epic follows Marian Graves, an aviator determined to circumnavigate the globe, alongside a modern actress resurrecting Marian’s story for a film. Shipstead moves effortlessly between decades and continents, rendering both narratives with vivid detail and emotional depth. The novel explores ambition, reinvention, and the quest for freedom with a sense of vastness worthy of its subject. Shipstead’s characters are complex and magnetic, and her prose is confident, textured, and expansive. Great Circle is both a grand adventure and a meditation on the stories we inherit and reshape.