Ed is an award-winning journalist and writer who understands first-hand what it means to immerse yourself in a story.  He doesn’t just research a topic, Ed experiences it. 

For his debut novel, The Woman Who Rode the Wind, a tale of aviation history and Paris during the Belle Époque, Ed’s daring and enthusiasm knew no bounds.  World record holders took him up in hot air balloons, sometimes without a basket!  He went skydiving to get a visceral sense of free-fall. 

Ed also immersed himself in French culture.  He rented a garret apartment in Paris and roamed the streets envisioning what it would have felt like to live in the City of Light a century ago.  Ed studied the language until he was able to read landmark documents at the Bibliothèque Nationale in original French. 

His curiosity and commitment have won him numerous awards and prestigious fellowships.  He was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his investigative work on voter fraud and Social Security fraud as a columnist for The Trentonian.  As a result of his work, an election was overturned and a corrupt official went to jail.  After his series on Social Security, federal law was changed to exclude criminals such as “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz from collecting Social Security benefits because of their crimes. 

While covering mergers and acquisitions as the “hot stock” reporter for Dow Jones, Ed broke stories such as then U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani removing Wall Street traders from their offices in handcuffs. 

A correspondent for Reuters, where he covers the insurance industry, Leefeldt is a former senior writer for Bloomberg where he covered topics ranging from industrial espionage to computer hackers and fraud. While at Bloomberg, his articles garnered two consecutive New York Press Club awards and he was deemed a national finalist in the Investigative Reporters and Editors contest. He has also been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and his work has appeared in The New York Times.

Ed has received fellowships to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania from the National Press Foundation and to Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as from the National Press Association, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, and the National Institute of Mental Health.  His other awards include the American Bar Association Certificate of Merit, the New Jersey Bar Association Award for Investigative Reporting, and several honors given to him by his peers in the New Jersey Press Association, and the Sigma Delta Chi national journalism organization. 

Ed is also the author of the non-fiction book, In Search Of the Paper Children, which exposed the foster care system and was instrumental in passing legislation to help children.  He currently leads “The Writers’ Exchange,” a Barnes & Noble program for aspiring writers in Princeton, N.J.  Ed splits his time between Manhattan, the Princeton area and the Jersey shore. 

Please contact Ed by email at litenair@aol.com.  He welcomes any and all comments from flight enthusiasts, history buffs and fellow romantics

An Interview with the Author

What is your book about?

It’s a romantic novel about an actual contest to fly around the Eiffel Tower that took place 100 years ago ― in 1901 ― two years before the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.  It’s a story about the dawn of flight, and the men and women who brought it about.  But it also has a subtext: the airplane is an invention that will make mankind better and yet also can be an instrument of his destruction.  We’ve now seen the darker side of this invention very clearly.

 Who is the woman who rode the wind?

The woman who rode the wind is a character based on Harriet Quimby, the first woman to get a pilot’s license, the first woman to fly across the English Channel and the first person to envision the airplane serving a useful purpose: to deliver the mail.  And she did all this 30 years before Amelia Earhart.

  Why haven’t we heard of her?

The most famous thing Harriet Quimby did was to fly across the English Channel alone, and in the fog, in April 1910.  Unfortunately that same week an iceberg in the North Atlantic struck an ocean liner ― the Titanic ― and claimed 1,500 lives.  So what Quimby did was overlooked and forgotten.  She was possibly the first woman to live — and die — on her own terms, and I suppose I ‘m a little in love with her.

Why is your book set during the Belle Epoque?

            For me, the most beautiful time in history is Paris before the onset of World War I.  It exemplifies some of the greatest art such as Impressionism, the greatest music, and the hopes and dreams of heroes such as the ones who created the airplane so that succeeding generations could be made better by their sacrifices.  They believed in “The Winged Gospel.”

             What is “The Winged Gospel?”

            In simplest terms, it is the belief that things can be made better if we just learn more and work harder.  The Wright Brothers, for example, tried to memorize the entire encyclopedia when they were boys.  When they spoke of their hopes for the airplane, they promised that “the infinite highway of the air will bring riches to every man’s door...“  At the same time, 1901 saw the buildup to the greatest conflicts the world has ever known: two world wars, holocaust and extermination.  Even though we’ve entered a new century, we haven’t yet escaped that world.  And the aircraft has played a role in both of those worlds.  I think of the space shuttle hurtling upward to the stars, and then I’m reminded of those planes crashing into the World Trade Center.  We remain as we were then, torn between heaven and hell.

            What sparked your interest in this period?

            I read about Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian who invented an airship that could carry a single person and could fly through the streets of Paris.  He could lower his aircraft to share a bottle of wine at a corner café, or rise to a sixth floor balcony and kiss a pretty girl.  He could scatter roses on the crowd below.  This was a sense of total freedom. 

            Sounds like you’re a romantic at heart . . .

            All right, I admit it.  One of my goals in writing this book is to fly my own airship through a city’s streets and scatter roses on the crowd below.  Sound crazy?  Ride the wind and decide for yourself.