From the acclaimed and bestselling author of Hemingways Boat, the profoundly moving story of his fathers wartime service as a night fighter pilot, and the prices he and his fellow soldiers paid for their acts of selfless, patriotic sacrificeIn the fall of 1944, Joe Paul Hendrickson, the authors father, kissed his twentyoneyearold wife and two baby children goodbye. The twentyfiveyearold first lieutenant, pilot of a famed P61 Black Widow, was leaving for the war. He and his nightfighter squadron were sent to Iwo Jima, where, for the last fiveandahalf months of World War II, he flew approximately 75 missions, largely in pitchblack conditions. His wife would wait out the war at the home of her smalltown Ohio parents, one of the countless numbers of American family members shouldering the burden of being left behind.Joe Paul, the son of a Depressionpoor Kentucky sharecropper, was fresh out of high school in 1937 when he enlisted in mechanic school in the peacetime Army Air Corps. Eventually, he was able to qualify for flight school. After marriage, and with the war on, the young officer and his bride crisscrossed the country, airfield to airfield, base to base Santa Ana, Yuma, Kissimmee, Bakersfield, Orlando, La Junta, Fresno. He volunteered for night fighters and the newly arrived and almost mythic Black Widow. A world away, the carnage continued. As he tracks his parents journey, together and separate, both stateside and overseas, Paul Hendrickson creates a vivid portrait...

Binding: Hardback;320 pages; Publisher: Random House USA Inc; Classification: BG; Weight: 686 g; Dimensions: 170 x 245 x 32

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