One of the 20th century’s more resilient mysteries is the disappearance of Flyer Amelia Earhart in 1937 in the South Pacific near the end of a round-the-world flight. Almost the only claim not made by theorists over the years was that she was alive, well and living in New Jersey.
That omission was rectified last week with the publication of Amelia Earhart Lives (McGraw-Hill; $7.95). In the book, Novelist Joe Klaas traces the ten-year pursuit of an idée fixe by Joseph Gervais, a former Air Force major. Amelia, they say, was really on a spy mission for President Roosevelt, was interned in Japan during the war and traded back to the U.S. in 1945, where she has lived under an alias ever since. Their argument rests on a slithering foundation of fanciful codes, anagrams, leading but unanswered questions, and hints at deals among the Japanese, Roosevelt and an American industrialist.
The woman they name as Amelia is Mrs. Guy Bolam, widow of a businessman and now living in Monroe Township, N.J. She emerged long enough last week to ridicule the book as a “poorly documented hoax.” Hoax or not, the people’s appetite for myth and mystery seems insatiable. Before her press conference was over, the woman from New Jersey had convinced many she was not Amelia Earhart. But some wondered whether she was really Mrs. Guy Bolam, either.
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