About our 2025 Author –
CAROLE HOPSON
Named one of Essence's "Top 15 Book Pricks for Summer 2024."
In A PAIR OF WINGS, airline captain Carole Hopson has crafted a riveting, adventure-filled debut novel based on the remarkable true story of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who received her pilot’s license almost two years before Amelia Earhart, and found freedom in the air. Hopson was so inspired by Bessie’s story, she became a pilot
herself at the age of 54.
The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the Great Migration and moves to Chicago, where she wins the backing of two wealthy, powerful Black men—Robert Abbott, creator and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, the founder of Chicago’s first Black bank. Abbott becomes her mentor, while Binga becomes her lover. Her true first love, though, remains flying.
But in 1920, no one in the United States will train a Black woman to fly. So, twenty-eight-year-old Bessie learns to speak French and sets off for Europe. Bessie earns her pilot's license, and learns death-defying stunts from French and German dogfighting combat pilots.
While she finds no prejudice in the air, Bessie wrestles with other challenges on the ground. A plane crash nearly kills her, her brothers seem to be crumbling under the weight of Jim Crow, and, while grappling with tough truths about Binga, Bessie begins to wonder if the freedom she finds in the sky means she must otherwise fly solo.
With tenderness and mastery, Carole Hopson imagines the breathtaking moxie Bessie Coleman harnessed in order to lift herself out of poverty and become known as “Queen Bess.”
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About the Author: Carole Hopson is a Boeing 737 captain for United Airlines, based in Newark, New Jersey. After a twenty-year career as a journalist and executive for iconic brands like the National Football League, Foot Locker, and L’Oréal, Carole followed her dream to become a pilot. A century after Bessie Coleman soared over seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Black women in the U.S. account for less than one percent of all professional pilots. Inspired by Bessie’s spellbinding accomplishments, Carole founded the Jet Black Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to sending one hundred Black women to flight school by the year 2035.
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“Bessie Coleman was a pioneering aviatrix who, in the early part of the twentieth century, was forced to travel to France to learn to fly, as no one in the U.S. would give a Black woman lessons. Her thrilling true story makes for an exciting, inspiring work of fiction in Hopson’s hands. This may be the author’s first novel, but as a professional pilot herself, she takes the tale and soars with it.”
— Leigh Haber, founding books director of
Oprah Daily and former head of Oprah’s Book Club
“Hopson shines a welcome light on her indomitable and unsung heroine,
and her technical knowledge enriches the many exhilarating aerial scenes.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Hopson, a United Airlines captain, vividly evokes the experience
of flight and does a commendable job illuminating Coleman’s struggles with
self-doubt and isolation even as she becomes a media sensation….Fans of
women-focused and African American historical fiction will appreciate Hopson's meticulously researched take on the life of a pioneering figure in aviation history.”
— Booklist
