Mennonite farm boy Lance Roark’s faith is as big as the challenges he faces on his family’s drought-ravaged Dust Bowl spread on the old Chisholm Trail. But college football glory and the skills of a natural born flyer carry him away from home and into contact with famed aviators Charles Lindbergh and Wiley Post, entertainment icons Will Rogers and Bing Crosby, best-selling young author John F. Kennedy, and President Franklin Roosevelt.

 

As war clouds gather across the seas, he finds romance first with teenaged Chickasaw cowgirl and stunt flying sensation Sadie Stanton, then with beautiful oil heiress Mary Katherine Murchison, whose mesmerizing voice carries her to Big Band Era stardom. Nearly all of this crashes against his pious, peaceable ways. And it leads him into the dangerous world of America First, the Lindbergh-led organization that opposes the popular Roosevelt’s covert drive toward American involvement in World War II, already ablaze in both Europe and the Pacific.

 

When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, Lance, dedicated never to raise his hand against another human being, faces his ultimate decision—whether to accept command of a B-17 Flying Fortress in which he would face, and inflict, mass slaughter in Nazi-occupied Europe amidst history’s most fearsome war.