Everyone knows the names of astronauts John Glenn and Alan Shepard, but few are familiar with Gerri Cobb or Bernice Steadman, just two of the so-called Mercury 13—a group of extraordinary women secretly recruited for space training in the early 1960s. Passing gruelling physical and psychological tests, these women, all pilots, consistently outperformed the men in many key areas, but not one of them lead their country into space.

For Promised the Moon, journalist Stephanie Nolen tracked down the 11 surviving members of the Mercury 13 to learn more about the program and the political and cultural climate that led to its mysterious cancellation.

Stephanie Nolen came in from the field with her five rules for success as a foreign correspondent. She's been doing that job and doing it well for two decades, filing memorable stories from South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She has won a record seven National Newspaper Awards for her reporting. Her book 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa won the PEN "Courage" Prize and was nominated for the 2007 Governor-General's Award for Non-Fiction. She is now the Latin America correspondent for the Globe and Mail and lives in Rio de Janeiro with her partner and two children.

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