Every marriage has its own mysteries, including (or, perhaps, especially) to those who are in it, but the union of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh beats the entire output of Agatha Christie. Today, Charles Lindbergh is remembered as the first person to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean, and, tragically, for suffering the loss of his infant son Charles junior, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1932, five years after that historic flight. Already intensely private, Lindbergh and his wife moved soon after to Europe, where he preached isolationism, espoused anti-Semitic views, and was embraced by the Nazis. Once the United States entered the war, he applied for active duty but was turned down by F.D.R.
James R. Hansen does a stellar job recounting these years, and shows Lindbergh to be as much a misunderstood figure as he was a naïve one, but where Solo and Togethertruly shines is in its excavation of the private lives of the couple, especially Anne, who became a best-selling author but suffered from depression due partly to marital tensions. They had five children after Charles junior, but starting in the late 1950s he also fathered three children with a German hatmaker, two more with her sister, and another two with his secretary. Though their mothers were aware, those seven children did not know the famed aviator was their father until after both Charles and Anne had died. Charles died in 1974 and is buried in Maui, while Anne, who died in 2001, was cremated and her ashes scattered in various places, including Maui. Whether she knew about her husband’s affairs is unclear, but Hansen concludes that she was so devoted to his legacy that she never would have let on even if she did know. Private people, indeed.