The Aviator’s Wife is a fictionalized account of the life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In the author’s notes at the end of the book, Melanie Benjamin explains that her motivation was to tell Anne’s "entire" story and try to understand the nature of her marriage to Charles Lindbergh. She wanted to make Anne the heroine of her own story, to bring her out from under the shadow of her famous husband so that we, the readers, could appreciate the “truly operatic scale” of her life and marriage.It's difficult for me to judge how much creative license the author may have used; I know very little about the Lindbergh’s. My overall impression, however, is that Benjamin’s interpretation is not totally convincing. I don’t feel that she succeeded in conveying Anne’s thoughts and motivations in a way that adequately explained her behavior. I think all the pieces are there, but not pulled together in a complete characterization. It was also disappointing that the Anne of this story remained overshadowed to the end because she continued to believe that Charles Lindbergh was a man above all others.
