While on his deathbed my father revealed to me a long held and very closely guarded secret, the topic of which he had never shared with another person, not even his late wife. I am convinced he became an alcoholic and closet madman due to the subject of that deathbed confession. I only wish he had told me years earlier as it would have allowed me to better understand the greatest villain, yet greatest hero, of my life. As it was, my father, a supremely gifted aviator, lived his life transitioning between the heaven in which he flew and the hell he fostered on Earth with-in his family. I suffered much collateral damage in my personal life due to the legacy of his abuse while also becoming his finest prot g ; I too became an aviator.

This memoir takes you, in fine detail, into the esoteric world of these two aviators. From flying biplanes, to F-16s, to B-777s they weathered the storms of mother nature as they circumvented the globe in whatever aircraft they were flying at the time. In addition to mother nature's maelstroms, they battled the personal storms of each other, and from with-in, as they navigated through life in an attempt to redefine either themselves or the other. The book's supporting characters are the many other pilots, both friends and colleagues, with whom their lives converged and intertwined on awe-inspiring adventures that showcased the best and the worst that the world has to offer.

This is a tale that illuminates the vilest of hearts, the most jubilant of hearts, and in the final resolve how a child helped to bring his father to redemption on the last day of his life; in essence it's a story of never giving up.