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being offered to train ambulance drivers, she jumped at it. The ten-week course included training in mechanics and, in particular, engine repair. Amelia learned everything the instructor could teach her about how engines worked and how to fix the ones that didn’t.
    Amelia would never recover fully from her infection. As a result, chronic sinusitis plagued her for the rest of her life. But after nearly a year of convalescence, she was ready to enroll at Columbia University in New York, planning to study medicine. She spent the winter taking courses and thinking about her future and her place in the world. At twenty-three, she was outgrowing her childhood faith and was beginning to question her choice of a career. As much as she loved the lectures, the science, and the reading, she could not imagine herself working with patients whose ailments were minor or even imaginary after having seen the grim realities of soldiers’ wounds.
    Amy, who visited her daughter in New York, had concerns of a different kind about her daughter’s welfare. Amelia confronted her mother’s worries directly in a letter in the fall of 1919:
    Dearest Mammy,
    I was terribly disappointed not to see you off . . . I didn’t realize how [my] pipings of doubt had impressed you until you mentioned your worries today. Don’t think for an instant I would ever become an atheist or even a doubter nor lose faith in the [Episcopalian] church’s teachings as a whole. That is impossible. But you must admit there is a great deal radically wrong in methods and teachings and results to-day. Probably no more than yesterday, but the present stands up and waves its paws at me and I see – can’t help it. It is not the clergy nor the church itself nor the people that are narrow, but the outside pressure that squeeze them into a routine. . . . Final Injunction DON’T WORRY.
    Before long Amelia, Muriel, and Amy learned of a turnaround that looked close to miraculous. Edwin was finally “cured” of his drinking. And the Golden State of California held the promise of starting over.
    Edwin had been living in Los Angeles for some months when Amy decided to move there with Muriel. Then, when Amelia decided to drop medicine and leave Columbia, she joined the travelers. It was in California that Amelia Earhart finally discovered her vocation and her destiny.

 
    Just over a decade after the Wright brothers ’ pioneering flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, daring young aviators, nearly all of whom were men, were exploring and expanding the boundaries of the sky. California was a preferred location because the climate allowed for flying year round. Soon the pilots discovered how valuable they could be to the nascent movie industry. With a little luck, a stunt pilot could be hired to fly in movies.
    California’s terrain also suited the new need for airfields. When Earhart’s family lived in the Los Angeles area, the city boasted as many as twenty private airfields. Spectators could go to an airfield almost any weekend to see an air show. Always thrilling, these exhibitions could also be deadly. Along with dangerous stunts such as wing-walking displays, the meets promoted competitions and races. A big meet could feature as many as a hundred races, and experienced Army or Navy pilots usually came in first. Racing pilots supported themselves by barnstorming - flying stunt exhibitions and selling short rides in their planes.
    Amelia Earhart, accompanied by her father, saw her first California air show at the famous Earl Daugherty’s airfield just outside Los Angeles. Immediately entranced, she began seeing a different show nearly every weekend. And in Long Beach, on December 28, 1920, Edwin Earhart arranged to have Frank Hawks , a barnstorming pilot, take his daughter for her first flight – a ten-minute ride for the then-extravagant fee of $10. Since women rarely flew, Hawks assumed she would panic and hate the whole experience. But as she would write