Tuohy, Theasa
WORK TITLE: Flying Jenny
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.theasatuohy.com
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | n 2012006895 |
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| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/n2012006895 |
| HEADING: | Tuohy, Theasa, 1935- |
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| 040 | __ |a DLC |b eng |c DLC |
| 053 | _0 |a PS3620.U59 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Tuohy, Theasa, |d 1935- |
| 670 | __ |a The five o’clock follies, 2012: |b t.p. (Theasa Tuohy) data view (b. Feb. 6, 1935: …has worked for five daily newspapers and the Associated Press. She is co-book author of Scandalous: The Musical, an award winning show about the life of DH Lawrence, and has written a memoir about renovating her home in France. She is currently working on a mystery set in Paris. She lives in Manhattan) |
| 953 | __ |a rg16 |
PERSONAL
Born February 6, 1935, in Oklahoma City, OK.
EDUCATION:University of California, Berkeley, graduated.
ADDRESS
- Home - New York, NY.
CAREER
Journalist, playwright, and novelist. Detroit News, Detroit, MI, assistant city editor; Newark Star Ledger, NJ, copy editor; XS, New York, NY, editor and reporter, 1986-2009. Also, worked for the Associated Press, Newsday, and the Detroit Free Press.
WRITINGS
- The Five O'Clock Follies: What's a Woman Doing Here, Anyway? (novel), Calliope Press (New York, NY), 2012
- Flying Jenny (novel), Kaylie Jones Books/Akashic Books (Brooklyn, NY), 2018
Coauthor of the libretto for Scandalous: The Musical.
SIDELIGHTS
Theasa Tuohy has had a lengthy career as a journalist. She has also written plays and novels. Tuohy obtained a degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked for newspapers, including the Detroit News, Newark Star Ledger, Newsday, and the Detroit Free Press, as well as the Associated Press.
The Five O'Clock Follies
In 2012, Tuohy released The Five O’Clock Follies: What’s a Woman Doing Here, Anyway?. It is focused on a female reporter named Angela Martinelli, who travels to Vietnam in the 1960s to cover the conflict in that nation. She overcomes sexism in her pursuit of obtaining the story.
Julia Ann Charpentier, reviewer in ForeWord, asserted: “The Five O’Clock Follies is a revealing look at the Vietnam War. This novel will escort the audience behind the scenes. … Tuohy has contributed a worthwhile fictional exposé of believable characters interacting during one of the most debated wars in history.” A writer on the International Policy Digest website suggested: “The amazing thing about this book is that it feels so real—more like creative nonfiction or a memoir—and yet it is nonfiction. The author did not actually serve in Vietnam but you wouldn’t know it. She researched the country and the people in intense detail so that we see the lovely young Vietnamese ladies with their elbow length white gloves, the five-person families tottering on a single bicycle; we can almost smell the gangrene and ubiquitous pho beef soup; we clutch to handholds as the choppers pitch and yaw.” The writer continued: “To give readers this sense of intense reality, Tuohy did extensive research, creating a novel that not only accurately depicts what life was like for reporters stationed in Vietnam, but also immerses the reader in the war that surrounded them.” A critic on the WA Veteran website described The Five O’Clock Follies as “very well-researched” Regarding the book’s setting, the same critic stated: “The author nails this milieu precisely. Nice job. It’s almost as though Theasa Tuohy had been there at the time. The author’s descriptions of how the distant sky looked, observed from the bank of the Saigon River or from a floating restaurant when B-52s were bombing ten miles away, also is spot on. It’s also beautifully written.”
Flying Jenny
A female journalist is also a protagonist in Tuohy’s 2018 novel, Flying Jenny. The journalist, Laura, covers a story on a daring female stunt pilot named Jenny. Meanwhile, Laura searches for her father, about whom her mother has given her few details. In an interview with Sushmita Roy, contributor to the New York Press website, Tuohy discussed the duel inspirations behind the book’s protagonist. She stated: “My mother had a pilot’s license which of course was very unusual at that time but I think she was just there for the fun of it or to join the boys. My father’s friends were pilots and even though he wasn’t a pilot himself, he flew all the time with these goofy guys. Whenever there was an air show, here is a woman, they would drag her along, to enhance the visuals or something.” Tuohy continued: “A lot of the stunts that Jenny pulls off, Elinor Smith did: stealing the plane, flying under the New York City bridges. The kernel of who Jenny was came from Elinor Smith as a stunt pilot.” Tuohy commented on the sexism she experienced herself in an interview with Jo Light, writer on the Oklahoma Gazette website. She stated: “Well, when I was hired, for example, at Newark … the only reason I got the job was the guy was desperate. Somebody had just quit, and he didn’t have someone to fill a spot on the copy desk. And they’d never had a woman there. So when I interviewed, he was like: ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ll let you try for a week and see if you can do it.'” Tuohy told Light: “The characters are very real because they’re very real people to me. … Me and my mom, in some ways.”
Flying Jenny received mixed reviews. A Publishers Weekly critic suggested: “There are some threads that are never resolved. … It doesn’t read like a completed work.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews commented: “For a novel about an exhilarating experience during an exciting era in American history, it tends toward the unimaginative. … What should be dramatic is made dull.” “Unfortunately, Flying Jenny is grounded by incessant introspective narratives on feelings rather than letting the excitement of the time and events drive the characters forward,” opined a writer on the Historical Novel Society website. However, Cortney Ophoff, reviewer in Booklist, remarked: “Tuohy uses fun period details and jargon to create a lively 1920s setting for this story.” Richard Rouillard, critic on the News OK website, noted that the book would appeal to “anyone who might be interested in women who prepared the airways for today’s female pilots.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 15, 2018, Cortney Ophoff, review of Flying Jenny, p. 27.
ForeWord, May 31, 2013, Julia Ann Charpentier, review of The Five O’Clock Follies: What’s a Woman Doing Here, Anyway?.
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2018, review of Flying Jenny.
Publishers Weekly, March 26, 2018, review of Flying Jenny, p. 94.
ONLINE
Author Shout, http://authorshout.com/ (October 11, 2018), author profile.
Historical Novel Society, https://historicalnovelsociety.org/ (May 1, 2018), review of Flying Jenny.
Interational Policy Digest, https://intpolicydigest.org/ (November 24, 2012), author interview and review of The Five O’Clock Follies.
New York Press Online, http://www.nypress.com/ (July 3, 2018), Sushmita Roy, review of Flying Jenny.
News OK, https://newsok.com/ (September 16, 2018), Richard Rouillard, review of Flying Jenny.
Oklahoma Gazette Online, https://www.okgazette.com/ (September 12, 2018), Jo Light, review of Flying Jenny.
Theasa Tuohy website, https://www.theasatuohy.com/ (October 11, 2018).
WA Veteran, https://vvabooks.wordpress.com/ (January 18, 2013), David Willson, review of The Five O’Clock Follies.
Washburn Public Library website, https://www.washburnlibrary.org/ (May 14, 2018), Kaylie Jones, review of Flying Jenny.
- The Five O'Clock Follies: What's a Woman Doing Here, Anyway? ( novel) Calliope Press (New York, NY), 2012
- Flying Jenny ( novel) Kaylie Jones Books/Akashic Books (Brooklyn, NY), 2018
- Theasa Tuohy - https://www.theasatuohy.com/about/
About the Author
Theasa Tuohy is a long-time journalist who has happily turned her life experiences and reporting skills to fiction featuring female reporters. She was born in Oklahoma City, the daughter and namesake of a pioneer female pilot who flew an old World War I "Jenny" with an OX-5 engine. Theasa worked for five daily newspapers and the Associated Press. Her "first woman" stints included assistant city editor at The Detroit News and the copy desk at The (Newark) Star Ledger.
As a playwright, Theasa co-authored the book, or libretto, of Scandalous: The Musical, an award-winning show about the life of D. H. Lawrence, author of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” ”Women in Love” and “Sons and Lovers.” E. M. Forster deemed D. H. Lawrence “the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation.”
"Flying Jenny" will be published by Akashic Books in June, 2018. "The Five O'Clock Follies" came from Calliope Press in 2012. Theasa's recently completed third novel is "Paris Caper."
She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and lives in Manhattan.
- Linked In - https://www.linkedin.com/in/theasa-tuohy-726a5835/
Theasa Tuohy
Theasa Tuohy
Journalist, playwright, novelist.
Greater New York City Area
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ExperienceTheasa Tuohy
Novelist
Company Name Theasa Tuohy
Dates Employed Apr 2009 – Present
Employment Duration 9 yrs 7 mos
Location Greater New York City AreaTheasa Tuohy is the daughter and namesake of a pioneering pilot who flew an old World War I "Jenny" with an OX-5 engine. She is the author of The Five O’Clock Follies and current publication, Flying Jenny. She is a longtime journalist who worked for five daily newspapers and the Associated Press. Her "first woman" stints include assistant city editor at the Detroit News and the copy desk at the (Newark) Star-Ledger. Tuohy lives in Manhattan.
xs
editor, reporter
Company Name xs
Dates Employed Mar 1986 – Apr 2009
Employment Duration 23 yrs 2 mos
Location New YorkFormer editor and reporter, Associated Press, Newsday, Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, Newark Star Ledger
Education
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, BerkeleyDegree Name Bachelor's degree
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- Author Shout - http://authorshout.com/author-shout-bookshelf/theasa-tuohy/
heasa Tuohy was born in Oklahoma City, the daughter of a barnstorming female pilot who was a contemporary of Will Rogers and friend of Wiley Post, the first pilot to fly solo around the world. Her mother and namesake, Theasa Tuohy, first soloed in 1929 in a biplane powered by an OX-5, engine of the famed WWI era Curtiss “Jenny.”
During her lengthy career as a journalist, Theasa worked for five daily newspapers and for The Associated Press. She was the first female assistant city editor at The Detroit News, one of the country’s largest afternoon dailies at the time.
As a playwright, Theasa co-authored the book, or libretto, of Scandalous: The Musical, an award-winning show about the life of D. H. Lawrence, author of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” ”Women in Love” I’m working with Theasa Tuohy on promotion of her bookand “Sons and Lovers.” Scandalous: The Musical just played to rave reviews in London.
QUOTED: "There are some threads that are never resolved. ... It doesn't read like a completed work."
Flying Jenny
Publishers Weekly.
265.13 (Mar. 26, 2018): p94. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Flying Jenny
Theasa Tuohy. Akashic/Jones, $15.95 trade paper (280p) ISBN 978-1-61775-621-4
This overstuffed novel set in 1929 stars young reporter Laura Bailey and even younger aviator Jenny Flynn. Laura is the only woman reporter in the city room for the New York Enterpise-Post. She's assigned to cover Jenny's daredevil attempt to fly under all four bridges linking Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens. The two don't exactly hit it off, and Jenny soon flies home to Oklahoma. They reunite when Laura is sent west to cover, first, a women's cross-country flying race that concludes in Cleveland, and then to write about Jenny's theft of an airplane in Kansas (which, it turns out, was not exactly the case). Their friendship grows as Laura agrees to accompany Jenny and her mentor, Roy Wiggens, on a stunt-flying tour of small Oklahoma towns. A late romance and an even later plotline about the identity of the father Laura never knew feel somewhat forced, and there are some threads that are never resolved. It is difficult to tell whether this is because Tuohy (The Five 0'Clock Follies) intends this novel to be the first in a series or if readers will simply be left dangling, but nevertheless it doesn't read like a completed work. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Flying Jenny." Publishers Weekly, 26 Mar. 2018, p. 94. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532997132/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=c955d654. Accessed 1 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532997132
QUOTED: "For a novel about an exhilarating experience during an exciting era in American history, it tends toward the unimaginative. ... What should be dramatic is made dull."
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Tuohy, Theasa: FLYING JENNY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 1, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Tuohy, Theasa FLYING JENNY Akashic (Adult Fiction) $15.95 5, 1 ISBN: 978-1-61775-621-4 Two brave women battle to live how they choose and become friends in the process.
Set in 1929, this is a story of female friendship and empowerment, a story of self-discovery. In an era when Marlene Dietrich caused a stir for wearing pants, women are trying their hands, for the first time, in malecentric fields. Jenny is a gifted pilot but is not interested in competition and record-breaking, preferring instead to fly when she feels like it and otherwise live her life. When she successfully pulls a stunt no one has tried before--flying under all of New York City's bridges--another woman-in-a-man's-world becomes interested in her. Laura is a reporter, fiercely ambitious and willing to follow Jenny to the Midwest in order to get her story. But she has another reason to want to poke around near St. Louis: Her mother is mute on the subject of her father, but Laura has a photograph that proves her mother was in that area when she was young. Laura hopes to find her roots. At first Laura and Jenny clash, but over the course of the novel, as Laura experiences the joys of flying, the two women come to understand one another and to learn from each other. The prose has a tendency to overexplain, in platitudes, who the characters are and how they are feeling. For example, Laura's bohemian mother lives in the West Village and has an affair with William Carlos Williams; to describe her, Tuohy (The Five O'Clock Follies, 2012) writes, "Free was Evelyn's favorite word." For a novel about an exhilarating experience during an exciting era in American history, it tends toward the unimaginative and is often repetitive.
What should be dramatic is made dull in this historical novel.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Tuohy, Theasa: FLYING JENNY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532700582/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=61d05cbe. Accessed 1 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532700582
QUOTED: "Tuohy uses fun period details and jargon to create a lively 1920s setting for this story."
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Flying Jenny
Cortney Ophoff
Booklist.
114.16 (Apr. 15, 2018): p27. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Flying Jenny.
By Theasa Tuohy.
May 2018. 288p. Akashic/Kaylie Jones, paper, $15.95 (9781617756214).
In 1929, a female journalist is a novelty, but Laura's bohemian upbringing--her mother has never even revealed her father's name--prepared her well for going against the grain. She's amazed, then, when covering the story of a female stunt pilot, to find that this sister anomaly seems anything but different. Jenny is from a country club family and seems prouder of being devoted to her husband than of being able to barrel roll the war plane she loves to fly. The two women have trouble finding common ground during the interview, but a string of circumstances convinces Laura to follow Jenny cross-country in search of a bigger story. Along the way, Laura urges Jenny to acknowledge her dream of flying; Jenny helps Laura search for her father, and the women eventually find commonality in staring down the sexist mechanisms of the time, each in her own way. Tuohy uses fun period details and jargon to create a lively 1920s setting for this story about self-discovery, friendship, and upsetting the patriarchy.--Cortney Ophoff
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ophoff, Cortney. "Flying Jenny." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2018, p. 27. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537268085/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=c840be37. Accessed 1 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537268085
QUOTED: "The Five O'Clock Follies is a revealing look at the Vietnam War. This novel will escort the audience behind the scenes. ... Tuohy has contributed a worthwhile fictional exposé of believable characters interacting during one of the most debated wars in history."
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The Five O'Clock Follies
Julia Ann Charpentier
ForeWord.
(May 31, 2013): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2013 ForeWord http://www.forewordmagazine.com
Full Text:
Theasa Tuohy (author); THE FIVE O'CLOCK FOLLIES; Calliope Press (Fiction: General) 14.99 ISBN: 9780984779918
Byline: Julia Ann Charpentier
Journalist places readers directly in Vietnam in fictionalized story of a woman covering the war.
The Vietnam War attracted journalists with determination and guts, yet rarely were women audacious enough to pursue this dangerous, male-dominated role. In The Five O'Clock Follies, Theasa Tuohy tells the courageous story of Angela Martinelli doing just that. Based on true accounts, this well-researched novel presents the reality of living as an independent female correspondent in devastated Saigon, while facing overt skepticism and sexist attitudes from competitive men.
This was the 1960s, a time when political turmoil and traditional roles conflicted with the expectations of a changing society. Even in Vietnam, a woman fought to hold her place, as Angela does throughout this gritty, often fatalistic, perception of a battle zone.
As the author's title suggests, military-approved briefings, which were a filtered source of information, were dubbed follies. Skilled writers like Angela sought depth and intensity, taking risks to get a fresh angle. Despite the heroine's commendable approach to controversy and her desire to go into a volatile area rather than watch at a safe distance, the book lags. Insufficient action detracts from the novel's page-turning potential. Prolonged discussion of sensitive topics, emphasis of romantic relationships, and a tendency to rely on description may have a lulling effect.
Only those who have participated in similar war-torn environments will appreciate the intensive work behind this detailed narrative. Interspersed is a smattering of black-and-white photographs, perhaps more appropriate for a history text. Some scenes are graphic, like this description of a faceless soldier: "His features were melting away from napalm like a mask of wax, literally running down past his eye sockets, his nose holes, dripping into his mouth."
Tuohy is a Manhattan-based writer who has has worked for five daily newspapers and The Associated Press. At its best, her writing conveys a clear picture of the disruptive life in Vietnam, such as watching the attacks close to an area known as The Iron Triangle. "As they stood near the
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gangway of a floating restaurant, dark and shuttered for the night, the sky suddenly was lighted, followed by the sound that brought the light. Boom, boom, boom. The B-52s hit or missed their target. Artillery rockets, chasing after the bombers, streaked the night sky red and yellow."
The Five O'Clock Follies is a revealing look at the Vietnam War. This novel will escort the audience behind the scenes, allowing glimpses of filthy rooms, street beatings, helicopter ordeals, and even the mundane details of Vietnamese life, all through American eyes. Tuohy has contributed a worthwhile fictional exposA[c] of believable characters interacting during one of the most debated wars in history.
Julia Ann Charpentier
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Charpentier, Julia Ann. "The Five O'Clock Follies." ForeWord, 31 May 2013. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A332212673/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=5f4b44ac. Accessed 1 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A332212673
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- New York Press
http://www.nypress.com/local-news/20180703/airing-it-out
Word count: 1433QUOTED: "My mother had a pilot’s license which of course was very unusual at that time but I think she was just there for the fun of it or to join the boys. My father’s friends were pilots and even though he wasn’t a pilot himself, he flew all the time with these goofy guys. Whenever there was an air show, here is a woman, they would drag her along, to enhance the visuals or something."
"A lot of the stunts that Jenny pulls off, Elinor Smith did: stealing the plane, flying under the New York City bridges. The kernel of who Jenny was came from Elinor smith as a stunt pilot."Airing it out
Published Jul 3, 2018 at 10:46 am (Updated Jul 3, 2018)Make text smaller Make text larger
Theasa Tuohy draws on her own experiences, and on her mother’s, in her new novel
Photos
Theasa Logan Tuohy, the author's mother and her "crate." Photo courtesy of Theasa Tuohy
Theasa Tuohy. Photo courtesy of Theasa Tuohy
BY SUSHMITA ROY
Open cockpits dominated the skies during the 1920s and ‘30s. And that freedom to roam the heavens was, for a time, a metaphor for an epoch when everything seemed limitless. On the ground, too, optimism spread like fog on a summer morning.
And, in greater and greater numbers, women were in the forefront during those heady days. They would gain the right to vote in 1920. And, increasingly, they would take liberties not explicitly granted to them, including flying.
“My mother was a flyer in the ‘30s so I just sort of grew up thinking that you do what you gotta do and it didn’t bother me when people would turn me down because I was a woman. I was like — OK, go on to the next one,” said Theasa Tuohy, 83, a veteran journalist who had tenures at Newsday, The Detroit News, The Associated Press and The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger.
Tuohy, who lives on the Upper East Side, recently wrote “Flying Jenny,” a fictional tribute to early days of women’s aviation. Taking place in 1920s and ‘30s, and loosely based on her mother’s exploits, the story explores the journey of two women: Jenny, the daring stunt pilot, and Laura, the first woman journalist at a New York City tabloid. Drawn from the true events in Elinor Smith’s life, who, at 17, and on dare, flew under all four of the New York City’s East River, Tuohy does what, maybe, she was born to do: explore the journey of various women in male-dominated fields.
How would you describe New York in the 1920s?New York of 1929 was just really fun. Laura (one of the two female protagonists) lives on Gay street and a lot of scenes come from memories; my sister-in-law lived down there for a bit. I used to live in the Village in those days and the scene with the woman screaming from the women’s house of detention came from my memory of hearing a lot of those women. My first apartment was on Bedford Street in the Village so the stuff about Chumley’s came from the memory of its back entrance being on the same block where I lived so I thought it was something really cool that I could sneak in.
Would you say that the main character, Jenny, is inspired by your mother and the stunt pilot Elinor Smith?My mother had a pilot’s license which of course was very unusual at that time but I think she was just there for the fun of it or to join the boys. My father’s friends were pilots and even though he wasn’t a pilot himself, he flew all the time with these goofy guys. Whenever there was an air show, here is a woman, they would drag her along, to enhance the visuals or something.
A lot of the stunts that Jenny pulls off, Elinor Smith did: stealing the plane, flying under the New York City bridges. The kernel of who Jenny was came from Elinor smith as a stunt pilot.
My mother was so tiny that she always tucked a pillow between her and the seat (which is how I got Jenny to do it); she didn’t even want to fly upside down because she was scared that the pillow would fall. Jenny gets her carefree attitude from my mother probably.
How much does your story of being a woman journalist back in the day lend into Laura’s development as a character?Laura faced a lot more but I could always sense the kind of things that she faced. She was the only woman in the newsroom at the time, at the tabloid, and the only way she got that job was because she had done very well in English at Barnard and a professor leaned on the publisher to give her a job and I think that’s kind of the way you got a job in those days.
Were there any setbacks when you started your career as a journalist?I think this was right after I left the Yonkers Herald Statesman; I was sending out resumes and sending them out to every place. One news manager sent me a letter saying “please call to make an appointment for an audition,” so I called and got on the phone and said, “Mr. so and so, I am Theasa Tuohy and you told me to call for an audition” and there was dead silence for a second and then the guy said, “If you are a woman, lady, the deal is off,” but that’s the way it was and so I went to apply to another place. It was then that I went to Yonkers and the guy said, “I have got an opening at my copydesk but I don’t know. I’ll give you a week’s tryout to see what you can do.” And I said to him, “How heavy can a number 2 lead pencil and copy be?” so for me it wasn’t a big deal and I wasn’t particularly offended. I got really good experience at Yonkers: I covered city hall for a while, I covered just about everything.
And how did you land in all these different newsrooms around the country?I got offered a job by the women’s editor in the women’s section at The Detroit News and I declined even though I needed a job but I had never done that kind of work before; I only did hard news. But then within a week or so, some guy from South Carolina was hired to be the state editor and the day before he was supposed to show up for, he called in and said, “I don’t think I am gonna come up there because I just found out Detroit is north of Canada” and it truly was north of Windsor, Canada and they were rummaging around and they just called me and offered me the job, not because they wanted a woman but just because they wanted someone. And then I got hired at Newsday because they had a women’s suit against them and they were frantically searching for women with the kind of experience that I had and there weren’t many around in those days.
Did you never think about flying yourself?My father got the idea once when he had too much to drink that, you know, I should be the youngest licensed pilot in the world. There was a tiny airfield near our house in California and my father was like, “Oh yeah! We are gonna go up there; I got the sky lined up!” and my mother was like “No, you are not. No, you are not.” It was a small take-off spot, the Pacific Ocean was at the end of the runway and there were a lot of electric wires and my mother knew it was a dangerous airfield. And that was the extent of my flying: that conversation.
What advice do you have for woman journalists?I mean they are all around! I looked around one day in the newsroom and I saw all these women; there are more of them than men.
- Washburn Public Library
https://www.washburnlibrary.org/adult-collection/2018/5/14/flying-jenny-by-theasa-tuohy
Word count: 345Flying Jenny by Theasa Tuohy
“It is August, 1929, and this romp through the early days of women’s aviation history arrives with all the immediacy of a late night edition. Theasa Tuohy memorably limns the adventures of not one but two pioneering women. Debutante pilot Jenny Flynn and cub reporter Laura Bailey carry the spunk of Thelma & Louise to new heights as they fight for space in the cockpit and the city room.”
—Janet Groth, author of The Receptionist: An Education at The New YorkerA young female pilot brashly defies gender restrictions in the Roaring Twenties.
A historical novel in Akashic’s Kaylie Jones Books imprint.
People were doing all sorts of screwy things in 1929: They called their era the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties. It was a time of boundless hope, optimism, and prosperity. “Blue Skies” was the song on everyone’s lips. The tabloids were full of flagpole sitters, flappers doing the Charleston, and marathon dancers leaning on their partners through endless nights. But everyone agreed that the stunt pilots took the cake. Ever since Charles Lindbergh had flown the Atlantic solo, the entire world had gone nuts over flying—even women were doing it.
Jenny Flynn defies the odds and conventions. “You can’t fly in a skirt,” she snaps in response to a question from Laura, an equally brash young woman who is crashing through her own glass ceiling while reporting for a New York City–based tabloid newspaper. The two continually clash as Laura chases the story, following Jenny’s barnstorming escapades across the midwest.
Flying Jenny offers a vivid and exciting portrait of an earlier time when airplanes were such a thing of wonder that crowds of spectators swarmed onto runways for a dangerous view of the exploits of the pioneers—men and women—of flight.
Kaylie Jones is the award-winning author of five novels and a memoir. She teaches writing at two MFA programs and lives in New York City.
- Oklahoma Gazette
https://www.okgazette.com/oklahoma/flying-high/Content?oid=4388968
Word count: 1344QUOTED: "Well, when I was hired, for example, at Newark ... the only reason I got the job was the guy was desperate. Somebody had just quit, and he didn’t have someone to fill a spot on the copy desk. And they’d never had a woman there. So when I interviewed, he was like: 'Well, I don’t know. I’ll let you try for a week and see if you can do it.'"
"The characters are very real because they’re very real people to me. ... Me and my mom, in some ways."Flying high
Theasa Tuohy honors the memory of her aviator mother in her novel Flying Jenny.
By Jo Light
click to enlarge Flying Jenny was partly inspired by Theasa Logan Tuohy, the author’s mother. - PROVIDEDProvided
Flying Jenny was partly inspired by Theasa Logan Tuohy, the author’s mother.Late 1920s America is brought to vivid life on the pages of Flying Jenny, a historical novel by Oklahoma-born writer Theasa Tuohy.
The book, published in May, captures both the exhilaration of early flight and the rough-and-tumble world of New York journalists, through the eyes of two young female protagonists. The women embark on a barnstorming adventure across the U.S., which lands them eventually in Oklahoma.
One character is Laura Bailey, a tough, quick-witted journalist at a New York City newspaper. The other is Jenny Flynn, a small but spunky Oklahoma City pilot whose high-flying stunts are drawn from the real-life exploits of female pilots of the era, including Theasa Tuohy’s own mother, Theasa Logan Tuohy.
“A lot of the stories I heard as a child are in there in one way or another,” Theasa Tuohy said.
Born in Texas but raised in Oklahoma City, Theasa Logan Tuohy learned to fly from Roy Hunt, a well-known Oklahoma stunt pilot. Theasa Tuohy said her parents were friends with many other postwar pilots, and her mother got her pilot’s license mostly “for the fun of it.”
Hunt tried to teach Theasa Logan Tuohy flying tricks, but she was reluctant.
“She was so tiny that she had to fly with a pillow behind her,” Theasa Tuohy said. “And she always said she worried that she would fall out when they were flying upside down.”
Like Theasa Tuohy’s mother, the character Jenny Flynn uses a pillow to keep herself inside the cockpit during her stunts. The character (named after an aunt in her family) also wears pants, just as Theasa Logan Tuohy wore Jodhpur breeches and boots, which was unconventional for the period. And the World War I-era plane Jenny Flynn flies in the book is a Curtiss JN-4 — colloquially known as the “Jenny.”
Other moments of aviation history also make their way into Flying Jenny.
For instance, in the novel’s opening chapter, Jenny Flynn impresses Laura Bailey and other New York City onlookers with a dangerous stunt, flying under all the East River bridges.
The real-life inspiration for this sequence was young pilot Elinor Smith, who pulled off the same flight in 1928. Smith was 17 years old, and she later told The New York Times in an Oct. 22, 1928, interview that the stunt was “easy.”
Theasa Tuohy said she set her book in 1929 because that was the year of the first women’s transcontinental air derby, a race humorist Will Rogers jokingly called the “Powder Puff Derby.” It was an exciting time full of new opportunities for female pilots.
In fact, after the derby, pilots Amelia Earhart and Louise Thaden decided to form a professional aviator organization, inviting all female flyers at the time to join. After 99 members signed up, the group named themselves the “Ninety-Nines.” Today, the Ninety-Nines has its international headquarters in Oklahoma City.
As one of the few female pilots of the era, Theasa Logan Tuohy was invited to join, but she declined. Theasa Tuohy said her mother remained proud of her accomplishments and joined the organization later in life. She was buried with her Ninety-Nines pin.
Inspired women
If these two female pilots inspired the character Jenny Flynn, then Theasa Tuohy’s own background as a reporter and editor certainly informed the creation of Laura Bailey.Theasa Tuohy spent several decades working at various news publications, including The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey (where she was the first woman on the copy desk); The Detroit News (where she was the first female assistant city editor); and the Associated Press.
She said, much like Laura Bailey, she often faced setbacks and criticism as a woman in a male-dominated field.
“Well, when I was hired, for example, at Newark,” Theasa Tuohy said, “the only reason I got the job was the guy was desperate. Somebody had just quit, and he didn’t have someone to fill a spot on the copy desk. And they’d never had a woman there. So when I interviewed, he was like, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ll let you try for a week and see if you can do it.’”
Journalism is a strong foundation of Theasa Tuohy’s fiction work. Her first novel, The Five O’Clock Follies, also follows a female reporter working as a war correspondent in Vietnam.
The period setting in Flying Jenny required exhaustive research, which Theasa Tuohy said she enjoyed as much as the writing process. Her digging led to fascinating discoveries of often-overlooked historical facts.
For instance, research into Ponca City and Pawhuska history took her to the famous 101 Ranch, where popular Wild West shows were staged, as well as to the Reign of Terror murders in the Osage Nation in the 1920s. One character in Flying Jenny even learns they might have some connection to this part of Oklahoma history.
Theasa Tuohy declined to discuss that particular plot point, not wanting to spoil one of the book’s surprises for readers.
click to enlarge Author Theasa Tuohy was inspired by her aviator mother Theasa Logan Touhy and trick aviator Elinor Smith. - PROVIDEDProvided
Author Theasa Tuohy was inspired by her aviator mother Theasa Logan Touhy and trick aviator Elinor Smith.She said she was also delighted to learn about a Ponca City stunt performer at the 101 Ranch who, in 1928, attempted to climb out of an airplane, down a rope ladder and onto the back of a running Brahma bull. The plane crashed in a field, but the pilot and performer survived. A similar scene made it into Flying Jenny.
“There’s crazy stuff throughout the whole book like that,” Theasa Tuohy said. “And it’s all true; it’s all based on fact.”
Despite her career taking her around the country, Theasa Tuohy sometimes travels back to her native Oklahoma City. She held a book signing at the Ninety-Nines’ Museum of Women Pilots on Aug. 25.
Museum manager William Long acknowledged the depth and influence of Theasa Tuohy’s writing.
“Ms. Tuohy’s book is impactful for this generation to see what life for an aviatrix was like back in the 1920s and 1930s,” Long said. “While the characters are fictitious, the events are real. These stories are an inspiration for future women pilots.”
Theasa Tuohy said she believes her readers have “a lot of fun” with her work and hopefully experience the same amazement she felt while learning about and researching aviation history. The spirit of the work, she said, comes from a personal place and grew out of the relationship she had with her mother.
“And the characters are very real because they’re very real people to me,” Theasa Tuohy said. “Me and my mom, in some ways.”
Visit theasatuohy.com.
- Interational Policy Digest
https://intpolicydigest.org/2012/11/24/review-theasa-tuohy-s-oclock-follies/
Word count: 1776QUOTED: "the amazing thing about this book is that it feels so real – more like creative nonfiction or a memoir – and yet it is nonfiction. The author did not actually serve in Vietnam but you wouldn’t know it. She researched the country and the people in intense detail so that we see the lovely young Vietnamese ladies with their elbow length white gloves, the 5-person families tottering on a single bicycle; we can almost smell the gangrene and ubiquitous pho beef soup; we clutch to handholds as the choppers pitch and yaw."
"To give readers this sense of intense reality, Tuohy did extensive research, creating a novel that not only accurately depicts what life was like for reporters stationed in Vietnam, but also immerses the reader in the war that surrounded them."Review of Theasa Tuohy’s ‘The Five O’Clock Follies’
“Listen people, I don’t know how you expect to ever stop the war if you can’t sing any better than that. There’s about 300,000 of you fuckers out there. I want you to start singing. Come on.”
This isn’t the only song that sums up the Vietnam War but it’s one of the best sing alongs with its funny, yet despairing lyrics and catchy tune. Country Joe’s “recruiting” song is pitched to big strong young men, students, potential American soldiers, even though he can’t give them a good reason as to why they should be willing to die in Vietnam – in fact, as he says, “don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn.”
Country Joe names the prime movers of the war and they are not patriots – they’re big defense contractors cranking out profitable weaponry to kill the Vietcong. Patriotism is the final refuge of the scoundrels here – the brute military patriotism that can’t wait to blow all the commies (slants, dinks, pick your crude moniker) to kingdom come. The pearly gates of Heaven are doing excellent business.
So what would a young, attractive, talented American woman be doing in this very male, testosterone ridden erratic terrifyingly violent environment? And in the 1960’s, which was a harbinger of change for women in many professional fields but perhaps less so in journalism. Journalism was relatively slow to welcome women (although one can mention 5 or 6 extraordinary women, predecessors of Five O’clock Follies’ heroine Angela Martinelli, including one woman who was paid the ultimate compliment: she had become one with the grunts). How may we, who can now turn on the tube and see scores of women correspondents, even on the battlefields, understand the magnitude of this barely fictionalized but very real woman’s accomplishments?
Well, it makes for a great story! And although Tuohy does not push this point, the character, Angela, has many traits in common with Tuohy herself, including innovation and determination – and the fact that she is breaking Saigon’s glass ceiling for women correspondents.
Touhy, the first female Assistant City Editor at The Detroit News, was confronted daily with the need to compete along with ambitious young male reporters. The Five O’clock Follies was undoubtedly inspired by this struggle. The struggle begins as the heroine Angela Martinelli arrives in Vietnam in a dress and sexy transparent heels, which cause admiring and derisive commentary from the guys, some of whom later become her friends. She soon sheds the heels for combat boots.
Angela is a complex highly intelligent blue blood character – she is given traits that are both traditionally feminine and masculine. On the feminine side yes, she occasionally weeps in crisis but wipes her eyes, gets up and gets going. She appears to be ruled by her emotions as she seesaws between two compelling men, one of whom she almost marries. She has been known to wear a dress at a fancy Embassy function but is more likely to be seen in camos.
But she is also far more likely to take on a traditionally “masculine” role – she is capable, trained, determined and competitive, she can be wounded in action and continue to work and help tend her fellow wounded even as she slowly mends, she can drink, and banter with her male counterparts, incidentally picking up scuttlebutt, the heart and soul of a reporter’s “down time.” She gets captured by the Vietcong, and is, amazingly, able to hang out and banter with them too, and is able to tell the story to American journals; and perhaps most importantly, she rounds out the tales of her Vietnam reportage with a story that is critical and that has appeared nowhere else in print- a story of malfunctioning American choppers which crash midflight causing far too many deaths.
We experience what she endured and increase our depth of understanding of the pull of this war and of Vietnam. The correspondents are sometimes able simply to distance themselves, to treat it as backdrop- to hold rooftop parties and “watch the war”—the lights, the combat. It is all so compelling that as the Vietnam War winds down and Cambodia winds up, even though she has just made plans to return to the US and to marry one of her suitors, Angela changes course. She feels obsessively driven to stay in country and cover the next war. “It’s Cambodia,” she pleads to her lover Ford. He says sadly, “There will always be another Cambodia” (and – understood – Angela will always want to be in Cambodia and not in a New England kitchen wielding a spatula).
As many have said, the amazing thing about this book is that it feels so real – more like creative nonfiction or a memoir – and yet it is nonfiction. The author did not actually serve in Vietnam but you wouldn’t know it. She researched the country and the people in intense detail so that we see the lovely young Vietnamese ladies with their elbow length white gloves, the 5-person families tottering on a single bicycle; we can almost smell the gangrene and ubiquitous pho beef soup; we clutch to handholds as the choppers pitch and yaw.
To give readers this sense of intense reality, Tuohy did extensive research, creating a novel that not only accurately depicts what life was like for reporters stationed in Vietnam, but also immerses the reader in the war that surrounded them. She writes from the perspective of the correspondents, and she is also close to the lives of the grunts – the adrenaline, pain, the dirt, the relentless rock and roll.
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Follow USIn a recent interview, Tuohy spoke of the reason for her choice of Vietnam for a setting; of her archival research on Vietnam; of her start as a journalist, and on the possible relevance of her book to today’s journalists.
When asked “Why Vietnam,” Tuohy says that her writing about Viet Nam dates back to 1966 as a cub reporter in Yonkers – about Second Lieutenant Francis Michael Doyle from Yonkers, his death in the Vietnam conflict and his UN memorial site. “An altar boy comes home from the war—a soft echo of the explosive war in Viet Nam.” Tuohy: “I suddenly remembered crying when I wrote it, crying at the gravesite. “ Doyle may have been the germ of this book.
Since that time, Touhy says of her archival research on Vietnam: “Work on this project began when I was working for the Op Ed page at Newsday and found a book called Big Story in the slush pile. It was a…study by Peter Braestrup with the subtitle ‘How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington.’ I can still remember sitting up in bed that first night and studying it, mainly the 1968 map of central Saigon with locations of all of the press offices marked. I take pride in the fact that the book is historically accurate, in terms of the dates, battles, and what life was like. Or as Hemingway once said: ‘And how the weather was.’ I traveled to Vietnam in 2003 to double check my research and pick up what writers term ‘the telling detail.’ I made a point of staying on the second floor of the Continental Hotel, where the hotel claims that Graham Greene lived when he was writing The Quiet American.
She shares it with me – Big Story (it is indeed big)- and explains that both the maps and the text are so detailed, that she was able to construct the cities of Vietnam as exactly as possible and plot the movements of her characters through them. I feel I am in a newsreel, or more accurately, I feel I am there and can see smell and taste the country on all sides as we move. It is utterly convincing.
The book is a lifelong project. In other news, Tuohy is of course a journalist. Tuohy says of her start as a journalist: “After I took my last final at Berkeley, I got on a train for New York. Before I landed my first newspaper job, I did a short stint at Seventeen Magazine. I wrote briefly for a children’s encyclopedia, attended law school for four days, worked at Macy’s as a store detective for one day and travelled in Europe a couple of summers, once on a freighter. I was thus prepared to do whatever struck me, so I paid no attention when men at newspapers wondered what a woman was doing there. I had a fun job I was trying to learn, and I loved the slapdash and unpredictability of each new day. The only real preparation I made towards the future was that I refused to take a shorthand course, even when I was repeatedly warned that as a woman I’d need something to fall back on.”
Tuohy’s comments on the relevance of the Five O’clock Follies for today: “We’re still in unpopular distant wars. Women journalists are around in increasing numbers, and paying the price such as American journalist Marie Colvin of the London Sunday Times who was killed in Syria in February. With women now being allowed to be killed, raped and shot at along with the men, it will probably come as a surprise to many young women today to find out how different it was not so very long ago. I guess this is progress?”
- Historical Novel Society
https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/flying-jenny/
Word count: 326QUOTED: "Unfortunately, Flying Jenny is grounded by incessant introspective narratives on feelings rather than letting the excitement of the time and events drive the characters forward."
Flying Jenny
By Theasa Tuohy
Find & buy onIn 1929, two young women test the bounds of society as well as their budding relationships in Tuohy’s Flying Jenny.
Jenny Flynn can fly as good as, if not better than, any of the guys. And she proves this by doing the previously impossible—flying under all five of New York City’s bridges. Her stunt draws the attention of the New York press, and one paper sends out a young reporter, Laura Bailey, to document the feat and to interview the intrepid pilot. But Jenny wants nothing to do with the fame or the interview. She just wants to fly when she feels like it and then to go home to the Midwest and her husband. And that’s what she does. Laura, ambitious and eager to prove her worth in the male-dominated newsroom, follows Jenny west to get her story. But there’s another reason Laura wants to go; she has a faded photo that shows her mother in the area standing with a man Laura believes is her estranged father. Laura eventually climbs into Jenny’s plane and flies with her doing stunts and shows, and a friendship grows.
Tuohy uses both Jenny and Laura to explore gender roles in the late 1920s and how two young women push their own boundaries as well as the society around them. Unfortunately, Flying Jenny is grounded by incessant introspective narratives on feelings rather than letting the excitement of the time and events drive the characters forward. What pulled me through this book was my interest in the air races, barnstorming, and women fliers. Those who are not interested in early flight might find this book sluggish and uninspiring.
- The WA Veteran
https://vvabooks.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/the-five-oclock-follies-by-theasa-tuohy/
Word count: 701QUOTED: "very well-researched"
"The author nails this milieu precisely. Nice job. It’s almost as though Theasa Tuohy had been there at the time. The author’s descriptions of how the distant sky looked, observed from the bank of the Saigon River or from a floating restaurant when B-52’s were bombing ten miles away, also is spot on. It’s also beautifully written."The Five O’Clock Follies by Theasa Tuohy
Posted on January 18, 2013five o'clock follies COVER!!!!!!!!!!
Theasa Tuohy has worked for five daily newspapers and the Associated Press. We are told that her excellent new book, The Five O’Clock Follies: What’s a Woman Doing Here, Anyway? (Calliope Press, 368 pp. $14.99), is a work of fiction, but it is a very well-researched work.I deduced from a comment about Graham Greene’s book about Vietnam being twelve years old that this novel takes place in 1967 and 1968. I was in Saigon during much of that period, and spent some time on Tu Do Street and in and out of the Caravelle and Continental Hotels where many of the scenes of this novel take place. The author nails this milieu precisely. Nice job. It’s almost as though Theasa Tuohy had been there at the time.
The author’s descriptions of how the distant sky looked, observed from the bank of the Saigon River or from a floating restaurant when B-52’s were bombing ten miles away, also is spot on. It’s also beautifully written.
Theasa ThohyTheasa Thohy
The author’s delineation of the character and behavior of Army Colonels and CIA types is also deadly accurate. All the news folks ring true, too. But I admit I’m taking them on faith, as I spent no time with “hard-nosed newsmen” when I was in Southeast Asia. I would see them from a neighboring table in various bars from time to time, but that was it.
The main character, Angela Martinelli, is believable. It is fascinating to watch her adjust to the business of gathering news in a war zone. The main problem is having to deal with the Old Boys’ Network, which mostly shuts her out of access loops. But she’s armed with a journalism degree from Northwestern and a lot of grit and determination.
The character Bo Parks reminds me of a famous photographer who was in Vietnam taking great photos and taking great risks to get them. He takes to Angela, and helps her connect with the war to get stories of her own. He rings so true as to be a portrait from true life, right down to his rotten teeth and his love of Jimi Hendrix. Angela soon learns to develop her own stories and skip past the focus on body counts to write about field hospitals and war orphans.
As a free-lance reporter with no home newspaper, Angela has to sell her stories in order to earn enough money to eat and pay her hotel bills. She is under the gun. Also, if the stories she writes do not jibe with the official line, the editors back home will kill them.
The author has Angela Martinelli arrive in Vietnam at just the right time. She gets to report on the Tet Offensive, the Siege of Khe Sanh, the rotor problems of the Chinook—not to mention being captured by the NVA and the VC, surviving a helicopter crash, and having an affair with the most prominent and respected newsman in Vietnam. All of this is related with attention to detail and with a gift for story-telling.
The book has an open-ended ending, which I hope means there will be a sequel, as I would enjoy reading the rest of the story.
I can report that the book lives up to the buzz I had heard about it several months ago. I am pleased to report that The Five O’Clock Follies may be added to the short list of good, well-written books about the press in Vietnam.
—David Willson
- News OK
https://newsok.com/article/5608102/oklahoman-book-review-flying-jenny-by-theasa-tuohy
Word count: 578QUOTED: "anyone who might be interested in women who prepared the airways for today's female pilots."
klahoman book review: 'Flying Jenny' by Theasa Tuohy
Published: Sun, September 16, 2018 5:00 AM
Advertisement"Flying Jenny" by Theasa Tuohy (Kaylie Jones Books, 288 pages, in stores)
Some novels are meant to be memorable; others are meant to be entertaining. Historical fiction allows readers to participate in moments of historical importance that were memorable enough to be passed on to at least one generation. "Flying Jenny" by Theasa Tuohy is as entertaining a piece of historical fiction as I have read this year.
From the onset the reader explores fictionalized information about pioneer women pilots. In Chapter One the protagonist, journalist Laura Bailey, discovers something about the person flying the plane under each of the four New York City's East River Bridges: "'Good grief,' Laura screamed at Cheesy, 'that was a woman.'"
This is the reader's first narration of several daredevil feats by 17-year-old Jenny Flynn, patterned after real-life Elinor Smith who performed the bridges stunt flying in 1928.
When reading fiction I usually give an author 50 pages to get me engaged. By that point in "Flying Jenny" I was involved in this exploration of women in aviation. As Laura's story develops we get information about women's daring involvement in flight.
Tuohy engages readers in all sorts of flying activities — air shows, air races and flying derbies — in which women pilots in the 1920s and '30s participated. These were the female pioneers of flight who shared the skies with male pilots all over the world.
Flying ladies early on formed the famous Ninety-Nines International Organization of Women Pilots, whose world headquarters are at Will Rogers World Airport.
After the initial experience in New York, Laura takes us by train to Cleveland, the terminus of a women's air race. Then we fly to Oklahoma via Kansas City and Wichita. Much of the novel's action takes place in Oklahoma: We learn about flight activities at the famous 101 Ranch as well as in oil cities like Pawhuska, Ponca City and Bartlesville.
Laura telegraphs specific stories to her editor even when the general information seems always to have reached him “over the wire services.” She meets women pilots, flies with Jenny and learns to jump out of a plane to experience parachuting.
In addition to the flying episodes, we watch Laura fall in love for the first time and learn all about her strained relationship with her mother, who just happens to be a close acquaintance of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.
If I have any criticism of the novel, it is the number of coincidences built into the sequence of episodes. For example, Laura meets Clem who is an Osage with a headright, or land grant, so in her discussions with him and others, the reader relearns information found in the bestseller "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI."
Overall, I enjoyed reading "Flying Jenny," and I recommend it to anyone who might be interested in women who prepared the airways for today's female pilots.
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