So you know that Amelia Earhart children’s book that Amelia Bentley talks about? Somewhere that book actually exists. I checked it out from the Kendall Young Library in Webster City, Iowa, over and over as a kid. But I’ve never been able to find it since. I can’t even remember what it’s called—I just know it had a salmon-pink cover.
My childhood fascination with Amelia Earhart, coupled with multiple trips to Little Falls, Minnesota, where Charles Lindbergh spent the bulk of his growing-up years, led to the light historical angle in this book. I sifted through plenty of sites and articles as I dreamt up the Lindbergh helmet storyline, but the one I came back to most was the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg.
However, I definitely took some historical liberties. It’s true that Lindbergh’s helmet was never recovered after his historic flight across the Atlantic. And it’s also true that after he landed, his helmet temporarily ended up on the head of an American named Harry Wheeler, whom the crowd mistook for Lindbergh. Many sources, including Berg’s biography, say that the American was a journalist. Others say he was a Brown University student in Europe on holiday. At least one, a Pittsburgh Press article from June 6, 1927, says Harry Wheeler was a fur buyer from New York who’d gone to Europe to purchase rabbit skins for a hat manufacturer.
For the purpose of my story, I decided Harry was a Brown University student. I gave him a friend from Iowa and made up a backstory for him. I also let myself daydream about what might’ve happened to that helmet of Lindbergh’s. I like to think it’s out there somewhere . . . an incredible piece of history just waiting to be discovered.