Oceans to Cross Amelia Earhart's Extraordinary Life and Her Fight for Women's Rights

By: Amy M. Kleppner

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2026-03-05

The ultimate biography of Amelia Earhart, written by the last family member who knew her.

Amelia Earhart was an unknown twenty-three-year-old in 1920 when women won the right to vote in the United States. Eight years later, she burst onto the world stage when she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Amelia used her newfound platform to amplify her profound belief that there should be full equality for women, in aviation and in society.

Featuring never-before-published photos from the Earhart family collection, Oceans to Cross: Amelia Earhart's Extraordinary Life and Her Fight for Women's Rights provides intimate details and insight from Earhart's niece Amy M. Kleppner, the last member of the Earhart family who knew Amelia. She shares stories of Amelia's early childhood--revealing that Amelia was a survivor of a broken and dysfunctional home with an alcoholic father and mentally unstable mother--her time as a nurse's aid during World War I caring for wounded pilots, and her advocacy as a social worker helping immigrant families find housing and work. But aviation was her passion, and Kleppner recounts how Amelia spent her days off learning to fix and build planes from abandoned parts while gaining flight hours whenever she could.

Amelia's success was never a foregone conclusion. Oceans to Cross is an inspiring story of what can be achieved through hard work, dedication, and advocacy. Her love of flying made Amelia Earhart a household name, but to her niece she was a role model, someone who believed that girls and women could do everything men could do and more, someone who spent her life fighting for equal rights.