The Pilot's Daughter

Imagine being the 5-year old informal air stewardess as Phillipa's dad, Captain John Hankins, flies four world leaders to the Paris Peace Talks. After WW II, people in London were suffering. Captain Hankins flew his family to Nairobi, Africa where they built a farm near the Serengetti. Even though he was then flying for British Overseas Airways, he established a working farm. Young Phillipa and her family survived attacks from the Mau Mau, as well as columns of merciless fireants, man-eating tigers, poisonous pythons, debilitating diseases, and a culture totally foreign to a proper little English girl. After escaping from the Mau Mau in a tribal war known around the world, Phillipa and her family returned to London, and begins ballet school against the backdrop of a father who left the family to be the chief pilot for the President of Mexico and her severely depressed mother who hated her for not being a boy so she could have inherited English lands. Phillipa had some wonderful encounters with Queen Elizabeth II and finally was able to go to America as an au pair. The final chapters of the book highlight her having a family in California, owning her own ballet school, escaping from a dodgy first husband, and traveling to Spain and New Zealand to tend to each dying parent. Finally Phillipa ended up in Orlando, Florida armed with a new hope for a successful life.