Great Circle

In Los Angeles in 2014, a young actor named Hadley Baxter describes how she first learned about Marian Graves’s life while reading a random library book. Hadley’s own parents died in a plane crash, so Marian’s story immediately interested her. Just like Marian, Hadley was raised by her uncle, a man named Mitch who works as a television director and seemed ill-equipped to raise a child. Mitch helped Hadley discover her talent for acting, and she grew up to work in Hollywood. She worked in sitcoms in her early teens and began to spend too much time with older teenagers at parties. Just as Hadley was about to leave for college, Mitch died of an overdose.

After just one semester of college, Hadley is cast in a fantasy film franchise named Archangel. The franchise was wildly popular, but Hadley now regrets dropping out of college, even though Archangel made her rich and famous. Hadley’s fame and success did not last, however, and after she “wrecked everything” (14) she became interested in making a film about Marian Graves’s life. In 2014, Hadley is filming Peregrine about Marian’s story. She films the moment of Marian’s plane crash, even though she knows that these final moments are unlikely to be an accurate portrayal of events. Even though the stunt involving the plane crash is dangerous, Hadley insists on doing it herself. She hopes that doing so might help her get a sense of closure for her parents’ death. 

In Scotland in 1909, a new ocean liner is being built. The ship’s owner is an American named Lloyd Feiffer whose wife Mathilda will smash a bottle of Scotch whisky against the hull to commemorate the launch. Lloyd hopes the new ship will bring success back to his company, L&O, but the ship’s captain Graves reveals that there is a delay in the launch. Graves will captain the ship on her first cross-Atlantic voyage, accompanied by Lloyd, Mathilda, and their four children, as well as the children’s nannies. Graves and Lloyd are old, inseparable friends, but Mathilda finds Graves to be cold and distant, representing “the basic impenetrability of male life” (17). Mathilda worries about the christening of the ship: She knows that she must smash the whisky against the hull and name the ship Josephine Eterna, “after her husband’s mistress” (18). She has always known about her husband’s affairs but loved him anyway. Naming the ship in such a fashion, however, is almost too much for Mathilda. When the ship launches, Mathilda almost misses her opportunity to smash the bottle. She hits the whisky against the hull, but the bottle does not break. This is a sign of bad luck.

In January 1914, the Josephina Eterna crosses east over the Atlantic. Captain Graves sits down at dinner beside a woman named Annabel. For years, Graves has loathed the requirement that the ship captain entertain the guests. However, Lloyd Feiffer insisted that he be “genial” (20) when promoting his friend to the position of captain. Graves makes conversation with Annabel, who explains that she is travelling to Britain because she agrees with her father’s idea that she should leave New York for a short while. She notices Graves’s dislike of making conversation and reveals that she shares his feelings. Graves denies the suggestion and eventually makes his excuses to leave the dinner. Annabel stays in his thoughts throughout the night, and, later, she visits his cabin.

Nine months later, Annabel watches a cat from the window of Graves’s townhouse in New York City. When her twin babies begin to cry, she must push aside violent, intrusive thoughts. Her long and difficult labor arrived three weeks early, and Graves was still at sea. Annabel struggled to think of names but took others’ suggestions for the names of James and Marian. To her, the birth is inextricably linked to the unfolding horrors of World War I.

When Graves returns five days after the birth, he discovers that Annabel is experiencing post-natal depression. She also has traumatic flashbacks of her father sexually abusing her. Her father forced her into secrecy, but her traumatized behavior infuriated her mother and resulted in a series of damaging medical prescriptions from doctors. The abuse only stopped when she left to boarding school, where she read many books to try and “remedy her appalling ignorance” (24) of the wider world. The novels taught her a unique perspective on sex. When Annabel’s mother died, Annabel was called back from boarding school. Later, she learned that her mother died by suicide. Annabel was sent to a different boarding school where a teacher sexually abused her. After leaving the school at 16, Annabel returned to live with her father. She took a series of lovers but felt ashamed and confused by her relationship with sex. Her father suggested that she find a husband, but she found no suitable match in a tour of Europe—until she met Captain Graves while aboard the Josephina Eterna. On the night she went to his cabin, she considered throwing herself into the sea. However, the same “wickedness” (26) that informs her relationship with sex saved her by compelling her to seek out Graves.

In New York City in October 1914, Lloyd Feiffer mourns the loss of his six-month-old son, Leander. He goes about his life normally, but he seems dead inside, while Mathilda has not emerged from her bedroom. Lloyd believes that his wife is theatrically overreacting to the death, though he is shocked by the intensity of his own grief. One night, when he intends to scold his wife, they rekindle their sexual relationship. Lloyd, whose father was a German immigrant, continues to go to work. He is horrified by the news about World War I, and he wants Germany to lose to spite his father. He wants the world to understand grief as he now does. When Lloyd meets with Graves, he hears about the “terrible gloom” (30) that has taken hold of Annabel. Though he has heard rumors about Annabel’s scandalous past, Lloyd never mentions these rumors to his friend Graves. However, he resents Annabel’s reaction to the arrival of her twins when he has so recently lost his own son.

In December 1914, the Josephina Eterna hits a mine while sailing to England. Graves has taken Annabel and their children with him, insisting that she cannot be “miserable forever” (32). As the ship sinks and everyone aboard chaotically moves for the lifeboats, Graves searches for Annabel. In their cabin, he discovers that she abandoned the babies. Graves uses a pistol to bring order to the chaos and ensure that the women and children are first to access the lifeboats. When he attempts to hand over the babies and remain behind to go down with the ship, however, he cannot bring himself to do so. He jumps into the lifeboat with the children in his arms.

In July 1915, Mathilda gives birth to another boy. Since the sinking of the Josephina Eterna, Lloyd has remained faithful to her. He now makes more money than ever, thanks to the war, though Captain Graves was sent to prison. To bring about Germany’s defeat in the war, Lloyd Feiffer was smuggling weapons to England aboard the Josephina Eterna. He had not told Graves about these weapons when they exploded, sinking the ship. Mathilda, however, blames herself for failing to break the whisky bottle when the ship was launched. Thankfully, the captain who had used his pistol to board a lifeboat ahead of others bore the blame for the tragedy.

In Missoula, Montana, in 1923, Marian and Jamie Graves are being raised by Wallace, their uncle. They are free to spend their time in the forests while Wallace paints. The twins are angry that they must “content with life as children of a famous coward” (39), and they rarely think about their mother. One day, while playing in a ruined old car lodged in a river, Jamie almost dies. Marian envies him and wants “to be the one who had survived” (40).

Graves is released from prison in August 1924. He has ignored all Lloyd’s attempts to contact him and declined any offers of financial help. Graves rides a train to Missoula, where Wallace collects his older brother from the station. As Wallace drives, he explains that Marian is obsessed with his silver Cadillac touring car. Graves had read about his children in Wallace’s letter, but he never replied. Though Wallace had never wanted to be burdened by children, he is now thankful that Graves is not immediately taking Jamie and Marian away from him. Now, Graves’s only request is that he be able to swim. Wallace takes him to a small pond and helps Graves readjust to life outside of the prison walls for the first time in a decade. Graves is reintroduced to his children: the skeptical Marian who reminds him of Annabel and the earnestly sweet Jamie. He watches the twins ride a horse in their pajamas at dawn and worries that he can only “disappoint and wound” (46) them. 

Hadley explains how a night with a musician named Jones Cohen eventually led to her playing the role of Marian Graves. Jones Cohen is a “notorious ladies’ man” (48), according to the tabloid press. Hadley was photographed with Jones by the paparazzi, and the incident led to the breakup of her long-term relationship with her Archangel co-star, Oliver. The relationship had delighted the rabid fanbase of the movie franchise, but glaring attention was off-putting to Hadley, and her time with Oliver never felt real. She was fired and replaced with a younger actor. 

Following her night with Jones, Hadley’s relationship with Oliver is over. Everyone—from Oliver to the studio to Hadley’s agent Siobhan—is angry with her. They are concerned that she has “punctured the romantic illusion” (52) surrounding the films. Hadley is aware that Oliver has been equally unfaithful, but his infidelity has not been so public. Hadley’s agent asks her to meet with Gwendolyn, the writer of the Archangel franchise, and Gavin du Pre, the head of the studio. Hadley remembers her first meeting with Gavin du Pre, when he demanded that she disrobe for him and perform sexual favors in exchange for casting her in Archangel. A few days after the night with Jones, Hadley meets her neighbor, Sir Hugo Woolsey. Her time with Hugo helps her deal with the toxic, febrile online reaction to her situation. 

Hadley remembers when, as a wayward teenager, her uncle Mitch offered to take her on a trip to help her. She asked to visit Lake Superior, where her parents’ plane had crashed. Taking a break from her decadent lifestyle, the teenage Hadley wondered whether her parents vanished on purpose. She wonders if they could still be alive because “anything is possible” (58). 

In the previous 10,000 years, the geographical area around Missoula, Montana, went through many changes. In the millennia before 1927, the ice sheets formed lakes in a cycle of catastrophic change as pre-historic humans from Siberia built settlements in the area. Fights between the native humans and those from Europe marked hundreds of years of violence around the 18th and 19th centuries. Eventually, a town was built but the violence continued. Sex work and opium were available as train tracks, electricity, and telephone lines linked Missoula to the rest of the United States.

Eventually, Wallace arrives in the area with the intention of painting the landscapes and selling his art. Years later, on the day after Wallace collected his brother from the train station, he is forced to tell his niece and nephew that their father is missing; as Addison Graves was publicly branded a coward following his ship’s ruin and his imprisonment, Graves is too ashamed to face his children, and he leaves to never be seen by them again. Wallace teaches Jamie to paint, and Jamie struggles to forgive his father for vanishing on the cusp of their reunion. Marian and Jamie continue to spend time in the wilderness and do not always attend school. They are friends with a local boy named Caleb, the son of a sex worker who picks pockets for fun. They learn about sex by watching Caleb’s mother, Gilda, through a crack in her window. Graves begins to send periodic checks for the upkeep of his children. Wallace fritters away the first payment on alcohol and gambling. Marian lives in the cottage intended for Graves and unpacks her father’s meagre possessions. She also develops an interest in all things mechanical and reads her parents’ books. Marian develops an idea of her father as an adventurer, based on the books in his collection. 

In Missoula in May 1927, the 12-year-old Marian rides her horse alone when a rickety old airplane flies over her. The plane belongs to The Flying Brayfogles, a pair of married pilots who put on airshows across the country. Wallace takes Marian to the airshow, and she falls in love with the idea of flying. Trixie, the female pilot and engineer, agrees to take Marian on a plane ride while Felix, Trixie’s husband and fellow pilot, shows Marian the engines. Wallace invites Felix and Trixie to stay at the house. Over dinner, they discuss Charles Lindbergh’s attempt to fly over the Atlantic. Felix gives him a one in a thousand chance of success. Marian develops romantic, uncertain feelings for Felix, and she is jealous of Trixie. She overhears Wallace talking about her father to Trixie and realizes for the first time “the magnitude of her father’s imposition on Wallace” (76). The sad thought bolsters her determination to leave Missoula. The next day during the air show, Felix lands a parachute jump just as the news of Lindbergh’s success breaks. When Marian flies in the plane, she feels a sense of lightness.

Five months after Felix and Trixie leave, Marian cuts her own hair. In the months since the Brayfogles’s departure, Marian has set her mind to becoming a pilot. She will need money for flying lessons, she realizes, so she needs a job. There are very few jobs for a 13-year-old girl, but she is determined because “she must be a pilot” (80). Caleb helps Marian repair the damage to her hair; she tells him to cut it short “like a boy’s” (81). As he cuts, Caleb tells her a Native American story about a woman who became a man. She called herself Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly, and she was eventually killed. In exchange for the haircut, Caleb demands a kiss. Marian reluctantly agrees. Afterwards, she reflects on the confusing sexual feelings that she is beginning to experience.