"If you were to put a blade through any sphere and divide it into two perfect halves, the circumference of the cut side of each half would be a great circle: that is, the largest circle that can be drawn on a sphere. The equator is a great circle. So is every line of longitude."
The above quote is just introductory material before the narrative commences and it is accompanied on the next page by a map of the world. The map tracks the doomed path of Marian Graves’ final flight. Curiously enough, that path creates a gigantic circle encompassing a huge swath of the eastern hemisphere of Earth. The significance of all this is to convey the essential importance of the concept of the planet and the lives lived upon it as all part of a great circle that repeats itself. It is also significant in pointing out that knowing where you are at any given moment is a perceptual phenomenon dependent in large part upon knowing where you have been and where you are going.
"There was the occasional spooky TV special about Marian in the ’80s, and a handful of die-hard Marian enthusiasts are still out there spinning theories on the internet, but she didn’t stick the way Amelia Earhart did. People at least think they know about Amelia Earhart, even though they don’t."
There existed another aviation professional operating within the timeline of the legendary Amelia Earhart. Like Earhart, the story’s fictional female pilot accomplished astonishing feats during her lifetime. Unfortunately, she also experienced bad luck that her life came to an end in almost the exact same mysterious circumstances as Earhart, but after those circumstances had already elevated Earhart to mythic status.
"Gwendolyn keeps writing. There are seven books now. But even before I got fired, Oliver and I were aging faster than our characters. We couldn’t be them forever. Or, I couldn’t keep being Katerina. Everyone knows men don’t get old, at least not in a way that matters. They’re filming the fifth one now. The girl who replaced me is a teenager."
Hadley Baxter is a young actress who rose to the heights of Hollywood fame on the back of wildly popular film adaptations of a best-selling series of novels called Archangel. What Hadley’s story offers insight into is what happens when a starlet wants out herself or is wanted out by the producers. It is this fork in the road that enables the storyline associated with Hadley Baxter’s obsessive desire to play Marian Graves in a movie being made about her exceptional life and mysterious disappearance. The connection between these two stories is what energizes the circular motion of the plot.
