Avenger Field

Avenger Field is unusual as a short novel because it is written in the form of a teleplay, so it is really like reading a play with more descriptive passages of action and visual than plays normally have when published in written form.

It is a dramatic interpretation of the story of American women pilots (WASPs) during World War II who served in a variety of non-combat roles important to the war effort.

As a dramatic work of historical fiction, it combines a number of real personalities with fictional characters who interact with them. It places the characters in familiar and well-known situations of the early 1940s; engaging them with people whose lives they touched against the backdrop of the most consummating war the world has ever experienced.

Kimberley Kates and her co-authors follow some of the first women fliers whose prewar experiences drew them to the beginnings of the move to employ women pilots in roles such as plane ferrying and target towing.

Kates, with a background in motion pictures, folds strong visuals into the personal and public stories of these women.

The work details the historic rivalry between the two best known female pilots of early WWII, Nancy Love and Jackie Cochran, who intensely lobbied First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and U. S. Army Air Forces chief General Henry Arnold to put women pilots in the military.

Ultimately, the two organizations - Love's WAFS and Cochran's WASP - were combined into one. The women never gained full military status during the war even though they served a number of vital aerial functions. Only decades later were they fully recognized for their important contributions to victory.