Flygirl is told from the point of view of Ida Mae Jones, a young black woman who lives on a berry farm in Slidell, Louisiana,with her mother, her brothers, Thomas and Abel, and her grandfather, whom she calls Grandy. The novel begins one night in December of 1941. Ida and her good friend Jolene are cleaning the Wilson house. They have been cleaning houses full time since they graduated high school. Ida and Jolene talk about Ida’s plan to go to Chicago to get her pilot’s license once Ida saves up enough money. Ida’s father, who passed away when she was 16, taught her to fly a crop plane, and Ida has wanted to get her own license ever since. Last year, Grandy took her to take her pilot’s test in Tuskegee, Alabama. Flying the plane was as “easy as slipping into an old sweater” (3), but the instructor refused to pass her because she is a woman. The pilot’s school in Chicago teaches both men and women.

As Jolene and Ida leave the Wilsons' home, they run into Danny Taylor, a boy who went to their elementary school.