Alongside the glamour was real danger, as they flew soldiers to and from Vietnam and staffed Operation Babylift - the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon. Cooke's storytelling weaves together the true stories of women like Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few African American stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of a jet-set life.

 

In the process, Cooke shows how the sexualized coffee-tea-or-me stereotype was at odds with the importance of what they did, and with the freedom, power and sisterhood they achieved.