Young Gene Stoddard is desperate. He wants to be a pilot, to spend his life flying the great airliners. It’s his childhood dream, his obsession. But how does a boy trapped on a farm in rural Kansas, with parents who are barely surviving the Depression and have no money for such “nonsense” as airplanes, ever get to be a pilot?

Fate intervenes on Gene's behalf, though, first in the form of an opportunity to learn to fly courtesy of the U.S. government, and then again, under less fortunate circum-stances, with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Gene finds himself in the South Pacific flying the most advanced bombers ever created—just the kind of experience the airlines will looking for after the war.

But war has a way of changing destinies, and it changes Gene's in more ways than one. Confronted with a dramatically different future than he expected, Gene is forced to decide what's most important to him: the dream he no longer has, or the life he can. As he comes to term with the choices he has to make, Gene learns dreams can come true in ways we never expect.