Carol Trent Air Stewardess by Jeanne Judson

Carol Trent lived in three worlds; her fashionable hometown of San Francisco, an enchanting base in Honolulu, and at 12,000ft aboard a Universal Airlines DC7 serving 58 tourists and frequent flyers on the coveted Frisco-Hawaii flight. Her dream was to be a nurse, but she found the regime too strenuous, and followed a friend to Universal - in 1956, airlines preferred girls with a nursing degree. Her parents were against it, wanting her to marry a young lawyer in her father's firm, but put up with this fleeting phase. Most girls married within two years of flying and retired. It won't last long.

This was when planes had the glamour of a large aft lounge with a bar and bridge tables, and a mother could place the bassinet in the seat next to her, the plane supplied with formula, diapers and a large change room. On arrival, flyers would be greeted by a head-dressed 'Polynesian king' and girls in muumuus would drape you with flowered leis.

Her co-worker Ted filled Carol in on the regulars; Handsome and handsy Craig Folsom who makes aggressive passes, and Ran Palliser, a native Hawaiian architect whose Kanaka family runs a plantation. There is also Lydia Arundel, a famous interior designer dripping in sable, diamonds and soignée elegance, involved with the two men in a new Kauai hotel development. Craig turns into a real jerk when Carol chooses to tour Oahu with good-looking Ran. Although the two men resent each other's presence, for Carol, there is only friendship going on. Intrigue arrives when Craig steals secret information from Ran, putting Carol in the middle of it, and it's up to her to save the day.

While advertised as a romance (there are fun times at an authentic luau, or eating Louisiana shrimp at Frisco's Fisherman's wharf), her time with Ran is just a deep friendship. Carol is determined to stick with her career. This is not the first stewardess or nurse novel I have read where our heroine chooses her own path over a man, and it's refreshing to see the message was not to earn a husband but a career you can be proud of.

I read this while recovering from surgery when I wanted something pleasant without tension, violence or mystery. Just what the doctor ordered.

1956 / Paperback / 166 pages