Beryl Markham moved to Kenya with her father at the age of four and stayed until her death in 1986. Her incredible autobiography describes the Africa she learnt to love: her childhood surrounded by the tribal people, her tangles - often nearly fatal - with its wild animals and her passions for racehorses and aeroplanes. Markham achieved notoriety and success as a horse trainer when one of her horses won the most prestigious race in Kenya. She turned her hand to aeroplanes with Denys Finch Hatton, the lover of Karen Blixen, as a teacher and became the first woman in Kenya to receive a commercial pilot's licence. Her adventures and courageous career as a bush pilot are recounted in vivid detail here, along with the richness and fascination of life in Kenya in the twenties and thirties. West with the Night is an exceptional autobiography filled with a strong spirit, fascinating events, and beautiful words. Beryl Markham was raised by her father on a large farm in British East Africa in the early twentieth century; as a child she preferred spear hunting with the native Muranis to her school lessons. At seventeen, when her father lost their farm and went to Peru, she chose to stay in Africa and began a highly successful career as a race horse trainer. In her twenties she gave up horses and started flying airplanes, becoming the first woman in East Africa to be granted a commercial pilot's license, then the first woman to fly the Atlantic from east to west. Lyrically and philosophically, West With the Night covers each of these parts of her life. Beryl Markham writes hunting stories filled with danger and tension, then turns and discusses the different qualities of silence or what it is like to fly alone over water for forty hours: "Being alone in an aeroplane for even so short a time as a night and a day, irrevocably alone, with nothing to observe but your instruments and your own hands in the semi-darkness, nothing to contemplate but your own small courage....such an experience can be as startling as the first awareness of a stranger walking by your side at night. You are the stranger. " This is the story of an extraordinary woman - and that alone might be enough to recommend it. The fact that it is also extraordinarily well-written makes it a gift. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14 . -- From 500 Great Books by Women ; review by Erica Bauermeister Used Book in Good Condition