The Pilot's Daughter

by Meredith Jaeger

Genres: World War II; Women's Fiction; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

The glitzy days of 1920s New York meet the devastation of those left behind in World War II in a new, delectable historical novel from USA Today bestselling author Meredith Jaeger.

In the final months of World War II, San Francisco newspaper secretary Ellie Morgan should be planning her wedding and subsequent exit from the newsroom into domestic life. Instead, Ellie, who harbors dreams of having her own column, is using all the skills she's learned as a would-be reporter to try to uncover any scrap of evidence that her missing pilot father is still alive. But when she discovers a stack of love letters from a woman who is not her mother in his possessions, her already fragile world goes into a tailspin, and she vows to find out the truth about the father she loves—and the woman who loved him back.

When Ellie arrives on her aunt Iris's doorstep, clutching a stack of letters and uttering a name Iris hasn't heard in decades, Iris is terrified. She's hidden her past as a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl from her family, and her experiences in New York City in the 1920s could reveal much more than the origin of her brother-in-law's alleged affair. Iris's heady days in the spotlight weren't enough to outshine the darker underbelly of Jazz Age New York, and she's spent the past twenty years believing that her actions in those days led to murder.

Together the two women embark on a cross-country mission to find the truth in the City That Never Sleeps, a journey that just might shatter everything they thought they knew—not only about the past but about their own futures.

Inspired by a true Jazz Age murder cold case that captivated the nation, and the fact that more than 72,000 Americans still remain unaccounted for from World War II, The Pilot's Daughter is a page-turning exploration of the stories we tell ourselves and of how well we can truly know those we love.

Release date: November 2, 2021

Publisher: Dutton

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter One

Ellie

San Francisco, January 1945

Ellie wanted answers. She wanted witness statements, mission documents, aircraft records, and every single piece of classified information that the army refused to give her. As she climbed the stairs to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper office, tears pressed against her eyelids. She had been unable to get through to the army officials in charge, the same men who'd sent her mother a Western Union telegram six weeks ago, blowing her life apart like a grenade.

MRS CLARA MORGAN 1944 DEC 15

THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR HUSBAND FIRST LIEUTENANT WILLIAM P MORGAN HAS BEEN REPORTED MISSING IN ACTION SINCE FOURTEEN DECEMBER OVER THE ADRIATIC SEA IF FURTHER DETAILS OR OTHER INFORMATION ARE RECEIVED YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED

THE ADJUTANT GENERAL

Ellie had clutched that yellow envelope with shaking fingers, a scream scraping up her throat while back in the house, Bing Crosby crooned on the radio, "I'll be home for Christmas. You can plan on me." She'd sunk to her knees on the front porch, an icy feeling rendering her breathless, like the time she'd plunged into Lake Tahoe in early spring at age ten to prove to her father she was no sissy. Her heart had been beating too fast then too, the shock of the cold water almost unbearable.

Now, fourteen years later, she was determined to find out what had happened to her father and his crew. She'd written and called the adjutant general's office, requesting the operational details of her father's mission report, the government photographs that had been taken that day-any piece of information that could help her. But she'd received nothing in response.

The last thing Ellie wanted to do was speculate-she was terrified it would lead her down a dark hole from which she'd never return-but she needed to start somewhere. She had to assume the Germans had shot down her father's plane in a hail of bullets before he could return to his Italian base, so she'd marked up a map in blue pen, making Xs along the beaches of the Adriatic Sea. No one is a better pilot, Ellie reminded herself. Father could survive a water landing. But her letters to the army, insisting her father could still be alive, received no reply.

She climbed the stairs two at a time, afraid to be late. Ever since the telegram, she'd moved about the world grief haunted and numb, but she'd returned a few days later to her secretarial position at the San Francisco Chronicle. Her mother, on the other hand, retreated to her bedroom with a bottle of pills the doctor had prescribed.

Ellie collected herself as best she possibly could, repinning a strand of auburn hair into her Victory rolls and smoothing her green wool cardigan over her white collared blouse. Ellie noticed her brown velveteen skirt had a stain on it and chided herself for not choosing differently. She would have much rather worn trousers, but as a secretary, she wasn't allowed to. Secretarial school had taught her to always look beautiful, to always please her boss, and to refrain from smoking-yet her boss, Frank Hardcastle, smoked like a chimney and looked like a bum, as did most of her male colleagues.

She wanted to go home, to change into one of her father's flannel shirts, and to curl up in bed. Her lip trembled, remembering how when she was eight, she'd ridden in her neighbor Billy Zubritsky's orange crate on roller skate wheels down Lombard's famous curves. She'd skinned both her knees bloody when she'd toppled over and ruined her Sunday dress. Her mother had screeched like a banshee and given her a night without supper, but her father had secretly given her a dime. God, she missed him.

A dark part of her wanted to say to hell with it all, and to drown her grief in a bottle of vodka, just as Mother drowned hers in pills. But unlike Mother, Ellie had hope-a dangerous, slippery thing.

She pushed open the door to the newsroom. Cigarette smoke and the smell of ink hung in the air around the horseshoe of battered desks where the copy editors huddled together, clacking away at their typewriters. The familiar scent of Lucky Strike, her father's brand, hit her like a sledgehammer. She would not cry. Not here. Ellie made her way toward the kitchenette to brew coffee for Frank, the managing editor.

"Where the hell is my Page One copy?" Frank yelled over the noise. He popped out from behind the glass door to his office, and Ellie quickly ducked into the kitchen, a small room with a sink and a hot plate. Though he wasn't the editor in chief, Frank oversaw all the day-to-day operations at the paper. Balding and potbellied, with a cigarette constantly dangling from his lips, he wore ill-fitting suits and a tie so loose that Ellie wondered why he bothered with one at all.

She brewed his coffee, then hurriedly poured a cup, adding powdered milk, just the way he liked it. She was almost to Frank's office door when she stumbled over a black briefcase. "Damn!"

Immediately, she slapped a hand over her mouth. "I mean, darn." But it was too late: Rick Johnson, one of the reporters, glared at her.

"Be careful, will you?"

"Forgive me." Ellie used a napkin to wipe away the droplets of coffee that had spilled over the rim of Frank's mug. Then she smiled apologetically at Rick. Never mind his misplaced briefcase had nearly caused her to break her neck. But Rick had received his press accreditation from the War Department and he'd already served overseas, reporting from the front lines before taking a job with the Chronicle. He carried himself with an air of importance-after all, he'd ridden in jeeps with officers and witnessed enemy gunfire up close.

Frank's shiny head was flushed from stress when he stuck it out from behind his office door and grabbed his coffee mug. "Took you long enough. Now hang up my coat."

Ellie's hands shook with frustration. "Yes, sir."

She transferred his hat and coat from where he'd tossed them on his desk to the coat stand in the corner. Pinning a tight smile of compliance on her face, she turned to him. "Sir, is there anything else?"

"When's the traffic commissioner here for our meeting?"

Ellie bit her lip to hold back from pointing out the appointment was written in his diary, right in front of him. "Eleven this morning."

She returned to the din of the newsroom, shutting Frank's office door behind her. As she busied herself with filing, she thought of the wives and mothers of the airmen in Father's crew. Following the telegram, a woman named Catherine had written. Ellie's throat tightened, remembering the letter.

Dear Mrs. Morgan,

I would like to offer my sympathies, because I understand how you must feel. Everything is so uncertain, and I just don't know what to think. All we can do is pray and hope we'll hear good news of our loved ones soon.

Knowing Clara wouldn't respond, Ellie had written Catherine back, the widow of Father's radio operator, and learned that Catherine wrote regularly to the other families of the missing airmen. These distraught relatives sent letters from Arkansas, Minnesota, and Ohio, asking what news the army had sent and what personal effects they had received.

Catherine shared these details with Ellie, and her letters became a kind of life raft. A woman named Diane had gotten two bundles of her own letters, her husband's fountain pen, his pipe, and his hat. Ellie asked Catherine to share her address with the other women, inviting them to write her directly.

I believe Diane got more of her Jimmie's things than I got of my Ted's, a woman named Wilma had replied, when Ellie asked what objects she'd received. Ellie hadn't gotten any of her father's belongings yet. She pushed that thought from her mind, remembering the most promising letter, which had come from Melba Doyle of Texas, the mother of Father's bombardier.

Dear Ellie,

Though my Tommy is gone, he spoke highly of your father in his letters home. He said Lieutenant Morgan was a fine pilot who the whole crew got along with, and they sure trusted him up in the air. I am heartbroken at losing my Tommy, and I still can't believe my boy is gone, but I pray you'll receive good news soon . . .

Tommy had parachuted out of the plane and had been rescued by local fishermen who didn't speak English. Ellie wished she could ask him what he had seen and where Father's plane had gone down. But Tommy Doyle had died that day, succumbing to his injuries. Had others parachuted out too? Had Father?

Ellie wrote regularly to the women of the missing airmen. All of them had one thing in common: hope. But they were paralyzed by uncertainty, unable to move forward with their lives-a feeling Ellie knew all too well. Their loss became a shared connection, and their wounds remained fresh. It was as if they shared a story with no ending, which only compounded their grief.

There was a chance-however slim-that Germans had captured the men, or maybe they were in hiding somewhere. If the army couldn't provide answers, then Ellie was determined to. She had access to breaking news, to the Chronicle's team of fact-checkers, and she was no stranger to late nights spent at the library. Unlike Mother, who had become a shell of her former self, Ellie wasn't going to give up hope that easily. She owed her father and his crew more than that.

Returning to her filing, Ellie felt a sharp twist of envy as she looked over at the reporters, thinking of her notebooks full of stories she kept stashed away in a drawer. She was determined to be more than Frank's secretary-to have a column of her own someday; but right now, her father gone and her spirits sunk, she lacked the courage to try. Ellie mustered just enough energy to make it through her workday, but that was all. Never had January felt so desolate.

With Christmas decorations taken down, San Francisco had returned to its cool gray state. Ellie rode the Powell-Hyde cable car, shivering in the fog. Both tough and elegant at the same time, Frisco was a city of sailors and reporters, well-heeled secretaries and operagoers in fur coats, jazz clubs and narrow alleys, windswept seascapes and impossibly steep streets.

The trolley grip clanged the bell. "Hyde and Lombard!"

Ellie stood up and stepped off. Beyond the redbrick Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory, Alcatraz Prison sat in the distance, on a rocky island marooned in the deep blue waters of the bay. Ellie clenched her fists, picturing its notorious criminals safe in their cells, while good men were overseas fighting. She pulled a Chesterfield from her purse and then lit the cigarette, taking a long drag-a dirty little habit her mother didn't approve of.

She stared at the dark windows of her narrow Victorian home, its blue paint flaking. Before the telegram, the lights would have been on and a casserole would have been in the oven. Clara had once seemed to enjoy cooking, though she reminded Ellie to eat small portions, no matter how delicious the dinner, in order to maintain her figure. Did her mother say these things out of concern or spite? Ellie frowned. Some people show love differently than others.

She yearned for the strong embrace of her fiancé, Tom, a sergeant in the Harbor Defenses of San Francisco. He was stationed at Fort Winfield Scott in the Presidio, where he commanded a crew of soldiers who manned guns and antiaircraft radar along the California coast. Though she couldn't see his battery from where she stood, Ellie pictured his foggy barracks near the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, and she felt comforted knowing Tom was nearby.

Ellie longed for the companionship of her childhood friends too, Betsy and Mable, who'd married and left the neighborhood. Growing up, Betsy Gibbons and Mabel White were trouble, but the good kind. In high school, they painted their nails daring colors while listening to jazz records and sneaking nips of sherry. They were the bane of Ellie's mother's life, or, as she liked to say, "bad influences." Back then, before the war, the once-formidable Clara Morgan had been an organizer of church potlucks and neighborhood committees.

Now she refused to leave the house, bathe, or even eat. Ellie had tried showing her mother the letters from the wives of Father's crew members, but she was met with a withering look accompanying a voice low and dangerous. Don't speak of those letters again. Your father is dead.

"You're not dead," Ellie whispered, standing at the crest of Hyde Street Hill and looking out at the bay as if she could see all the way to Europe. "I know you're not."

She stubbed out her cigarette and trudged up the creaky steps leading to her front porch. A box waited on the stoop. Had Aunt Iris brought by a meal for supper? Iris had no children of her own, and she lived alone in North Beach, in an apartment above an Italian restaurant. In the awful weeks since the telegram, Ellie had grown even closer to her beloved aunt, who came around with spaghetti marinara and comforting hugs.

But as Ellie climbed the stairs, she saw the foreign postage plastered on the battered cardboard box. Her breath caught in her throat. She tore through the tape holding the box together and tugged open the flaps. Inside was a woolen, olive field jacket. Tears clogged her throat. The army had finally sent her father's belongings. Ellie took out the official letter inside and read.

Dear Mrs. Morgan,

These are the personal effects of your husband, Army Air Forces First Lieutenant William P. Morgan. We offer our sincerest condolences.

Ellie wiped away her tears, pulled out his army-issued jacket, and brought it to her nose, longing for the scent of her father's cologne. But his jacket only smelled of mildew. In the bottom of the box, a cigarette lighter, a ballpoint pen, and a hair comb rolled around. Did these things mean anything to him? Ellie felt a renewed wave of frustration at the army. Where were the missing aircrew reports she had requested? What was the tail number of the plane her father had flown on the day of his disappearance?

Still clutching his jacket to her chest, Ellie felt something bulky in one of the breast pockets. She unfastened the button with her unruly fingers, stiff from the cold night air. When it finally came loose, Ellie reached inside and retrieved a stack of letters. They were tied together with twine, the blue and red striped airmail envelopes gossamer thin and smudged with dirt, as if her father had carried them with him everywhere.