It began with a shoebox of mysterious vintage photographs. In them, a young woman—calves sheathed in leather, chest blazoned with skull and crossbones—straddles a motorcycle and rides perpendicular to the ground, chasing her own shadow on a twenty-foot high, barrel-shaped track known as the Wall of Death.  

Hired as a detective to discover the identity of this trailblazing daredevil, writer Kim Wood fell into these images with abandon, fell in love with the ghost of the Kansas farm girl who ran away with the carnival in 1916 and traveled the globe, breaking hearts from Hollywood to Hong Kong. 

But uncovering the whole story of Lillian LaFrance, The Girl Who Flirts with Death, broke her heart.

A slim memoir of carny half-truths and a trail of clues hidden in a trove of letters and scrapbooks, tell of a woman who overcame poverty, immigrant oppression, and limited education—only to be stopped in her tracks by the Great Depression and its attendant conservative cultural shift, and haunted by internalized misogyny. 

 ADVICE TO ADVENTUROUS GIRLS twines historically-based fiction and literary memoir to lay a path back to every person’s birthright: a heart full of wonder and worthiness. It incorporates the unpublished archive of Lillian LaFrance, the first woman in the world to ride a Wall of Death.