LONDONDERRY — When Ruth Franckling earned her pilot’s license in 1940 and became the first woman to earn a commercial rating in Ulster County, N.Y. in 1941, she probably never thought that a book would be written about her one day.

But many years later, that’s just what happened. Franckling’s daughter, author Margaret DiBenedetto, has written “Silver Dollar Girls,” a novel based on her mother’s World War II experiences flying as a WASP-one of a group of female pilots who flew 80 percent of U.S. military ferrying missions and delivered 12,652 aircraft of 78 different kinds.

DiBenedetto will speak about “Silver Dollar Girls” and her mother’s flying career on Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. at the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire, 27 Navigator Rd. in Londonderry. Admission is $10 per person at the door; members will be admitted free of charge. The presentation is part of the museum’s presentation series, Exploring Aviation.

With more than 700 hours of flight time obtained in between working in her father’s dairy store, Ruth was accepted into Class 43-W-2 of the WASP, graduating from Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, on May 28, 1943. She was one of just 143 WASP who qualified to fly pursuit aircraft, her favorite of which was the P-51 Mustang. She flew for what would become the U.S. Army Air Force for 18 months, ferrying war planes from factories to air bases across the country.

DiBenedetto wrote “Silver Dollar Girls” with the hope of educating a wider, younger audience about the WASP during World War II with a tale that is a combination of World War II history and a fictional family narrative, set in a rural valley of the Catskill Mountains during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

DiBenedetto has lived most of her life in the Catskills of New York. She attended Sam Houston State University in Texas and studied with Texas Poet Laureate Paul Ruffin.

She graduated with a degree in Biology from SUNY Oneonta. Retired from her job in land management with the Department of Environmental Protection in 2020, DiBenedetto is the board chair of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development. She travels to military museums and air shows around the country to talk about her mother’s experiences.