"In Full Flight - A Story of Africa and Atonement" - John Heminway

Above: "In Full Flight - A Story of Africa and Atonement" - John Heminway - 352 Pages.

We see both Spoerry's weakness and her courage, driven by a powerful need to atone.

I completed reading this book today.

TIMDT and Mwah (sic) are contemplating a trip to West Africa and so my antennae are up for any interesting book about Africa. My attention was drawn to "In Full Flight," published this year, while reading a recent edition of "The New York Review of Books." I also viewed, recently, Cristiane Amanpour's CNN interview of the author about his book. Serendipity struck and I ordered the book on Amazon.

The book is about Dr. Anne Spoerry, the famous flying doctor of Kenya who treated over a million people across rural Kenya over a span of fifty years. Born in France, Spoerry learned how to fly a plane at age forty-five. She earned the nickname, "Mama Daktari" from the people of Kenya.

Rudy Jr. and Mwah (sic) were on a two week photo safari visit to Kenya during the summer of 1989. We were ignorant of Spoerry's notoriety at the time. Looking back, Spoerry was at the height of her fame at the time of our visit.

Author, Heminway, a long time reporter of things African, befriended Spoerry in Kenya during the early 80's. He and many other reporters wrote articles and filmed documentaries about her. During the twenty or so years between Heminway's first encounter with Spoerry and her death, in 1995, Heminway came up dry when he asked her about her experience and whereabouts during WWII.

After Spoerry's death, Heminway dug. He met people who knew people, came across Spoerry's personal files... and found out about Spoerry's wartime past, marked by rebellion and personal decisions that earned her another nickname - this one sinister - working as a "doctor" at the Ravensbruck Nazi concentration camp some 60 miles north of Berlin.

The book was a valuable read for its descriptive accounts alone:
Do you like Paris? There are detailed descriptions of Anne trapsing around pre war Paris as a young medical student and later as a loyal operative in the French resistance.

Are you flummoxed about the Nazis' descent into pure evil? Not for the squeamish are Heminway's sordid accounts of how Nazi concentration camps were operated and what evils were committed therein... and how a captured French resistance operative, Anne Spoerry, was co opted at the female only Ravensbruck concentration camp to aid her Nazi captors in fulfilling their evil designs.

Do you love Africa...history, landscapes and people? The account of Anne's life in Kenya includes fascinating stories of the colonial life.... pre and post Kenyan independence. There is an excellent account of the Mau Mau rebellion in the book. Also, the Africa-phile will love the colorful accounts of Anne's medical relief trips from one end of the country to the other, with descriptions of geography and people.

Do you like flying small aircraft? Anne's erratic flying style, her bumpy landings and her tendancy to doze at the stick should be a source of bemusement for any serious pilot.

But, the central theme of the book is atonement. Does a mountain of good works in one's life cancel out a brief, but appalling, episode of commiting great evil? Was the evil coerced? Who are we to judge? Heminway does not answer these questions, but he is masterful in outlining a complex moral dilemma for his readers to consider.

I was glad to have read the book. Serendipitous exploration in reading has always worked for me.