The Boy with WingsBerta RuckOmniClassics · Literature
The Boy with Wings
Berta RuckA London typist's fascination with flying becomes a love story overtaken by the outbreak of war.
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About the book
Gwenna Williams has left her Welsh home for work in London, eager for experiences beyond the life her guardian considers suitable. At a flying display at Hendon, the sight of aircraft makes that desire for freedom exhilaratingly concrete. Her attraction to the airman Paul Dampier develops among office friendships, lively conversation, and competing ideas about what a modern young woman should want. Berta Ruck sets the romance across the months of 1914 in which aviation changes from a spectacle of daring into an urgent instrument of war. The approach of military service alters the time available for decisions about love and marriage. Gwenna's private hopes remain central, but the wings that seemed to promise escape also connect her future to events she cannot direct.
- Love and wartime separation
- Aviation and freedom
- Women's independence
Why read it
The progression from the Hendon display to wartime flying gives the central image of wings a changing emotional meaning.
English A. L. Burt text with the 1915 Dodd, Mead copyright; also published as The Lad with Wings
Contents and reading sections
- Section 1
- Section 2
- Section 3
- Section 4
- Section 5
- Section 6
- Section 7
- Section 8
- Section 9
- Section 10
- Section 11
- Section 12
- Section 13
- Section 14
- Section 15
- Section 16
- Section 17
- Section 18
- Section 19
- Section 20
- Section 21
- Section 22
- Section 23
- Section 24
- Section 25
- Section 26
- Section 27
- Section 28
- Section 29
- Section 30
- Section 31
- Section 32
- Section 33
- Section 34
- Section 35
- Section 36
- Section 37
- Section 38
- Section 39
- Section 40
- Section 41
- Section 42
- Section 43
- Section 44
- Section 45