The Erotic Manifesto, a novel by William Hammett

Amelia Earhart, America's most famous aviatrix, was born on July 24, 1897. Since the history of her last flight has some bearing on The Erotic Manifesto, the following thumbnail sketch is offered here for the interested reader. It's an interesting thumbnail sketch, however, with one or two facts that might just startle you.
Earhart began taking flying lessons from Neta Snook at Kinner Field in Longbeach, California. (Neta Snook - now there's a name you don't hear every day. It's as unusual as some of the names of characters in The Erotic Manifesto.) Despite frequent crashes and mishaps, Amelia soon purchased a plane of her own, dubbing it The Canary, and by 1922, she had broken the women's altitude record of 14,000 feet.
Amelia Earhart

      She attained celebrity status thanks to publisher George Putnam, whom she later married. Putnam was looking for a woman to make a trans-Atlantic flight. Earhart made the flight from Nova Scotia to South Wales on June 3, 1928. Because of her resemblance to Charles Lindberg, she was nicknamed "Lady Lindy."
      In 1935, she attempted to fly around the world in a Lockheed Electra 10E with Fred Noonan as her navigator. She headed west, going from California to Hawaii. She crashed upon take-off from Pearl Harbor as she embarked on the second leg of her journey. No one was injured, but the plane suffered considerable damage.
      She was not to be deterred, however, and she and Noonan took off in a rebuilt Lockheed Electra on June 1, 1937. She was headed east this time, going first from Miami, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. She then skirted South America and proceeded to Africa, the Red Sea, Calcutta, Rangoon, Bangkok, Singapore, and Bandoeng. Having dysentery, she paused at Bandoeng until June 27, when she set out for Port Darwin, Australia. She and Noonan dumped the parachutes at Port Darwin, trying to shed excess weight (reasoning that a chute wasn't going to be of much value over the Pacific anyway). She reached Lae, New Guinea, on June 29.
      Here is where the mystery begins. She left Lea on July 2, aiming for tiny Howland Island for re-fueling, Howland being nothing more than an atoll, a mere speck in the vast Pacific. The Coast Guard cutter Itasca was stationed off Howland in order to provide a radio contact to help Earhart and Noonan navigate. A few transmissions were received by the Itasca, and then there was silence. After several hours elapsed, the Itasca concluded Earhart must have ditched the Electra since fuel had been perilously low. President Roosevelt authorized nine naval vessels and sixty-six aircraft to search for Earhart at a cost of $4 million dollars. The search was called off on July 18.
      But what really happened to Earhart and Noonan? The fate of Lady Lindy has remained a mystery, one that refuses to die. Some modern investigators believe she is still sitting in her Electra on the bottom of the Pacific. Todd Swindell, however, concluded that she actually landed on one of the Marshall Islands and was captured by the Japanese. He believes she was later released, returning to New Jersey where she lived as a housewife. Admiral Chester Nimitz himself is reported to have told author Fred Goerner that Earhart was indeed captured by the Japanese.
      Researcher Joe Gervais believes he met Earhart in 1965 at a meeting of the Early Birds, a group of aviation pioneers. He believed Irene Graigmile Bolam bore an uncanny resemblance to Earhart, and noted that she was wearing two of Amelia's aviation pins. When Joe Laas wrote a book in 1970 titled Amelia Earhart Lives, Bolam sued. The defendants offered to settle for $2 million if Bolam would allow herself to be fingerprinted before a judge. Bolam refused and the case was dropped! Bolam died in 1982, having willed her body to Rutgers University for scientific research.
      "The Earhart Project" was launched in 1988 by TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery). Speculation on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart continues to this day, even in the pages of The Erotic Manifesto.