SOURCE: "Of Time and the River," in Nation, April 22, 1996, pp. 35-6.

[In the following excerpt, Rauch criticizes the way Mendelsohn alternates between the first and third person narrative in I Was Amelia Earhart.]

The mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance is the subject of Jane Mendelsohn's first novel. Whether Earhart lived or died is of secondary importance to Mendelsohn, who basks in the dreamy, terrifying magic of a plane roaring through the sky, then falling a mile to the sea. She basks as well in the imagination and despair of the woman—famous heroine, detached pilot—within the plane.

But she doesn't solve the mystery of Earhart's death. On a miraculous desert island, animals gather on the beach and communicate with Noonan, Earhart's navigator. Planes appear and disappear on the horizon; planes circle overhead; planes could rescue them; Amelia's downed Electra glints on the beach. There is solitude. There...