For Love and Glory opens in 1940 as Lange DeLony, a civilian pilot in Texas, is down on his luck-no car, no money saved, and his ex-wife has just been killed in a car accident. With his self-esteem at low tide, he learns Britain is recruiting American pilots to fly for the Royal Air Force. Knowing he needs a fresh start, he joins the RAF and is posted to a fighter squadron east of London. On the train headed there he meets a Canadian ferry pilot. Mackie MacLeod seems self-assured, but she's lonely. What begins as a hasty war-time romance turns into an intense love affair.

Once the United States enters the war the danger intensifies. Each fighter mission becomes more treacherous. The war seems endless and unbearable, when late in 1943, Mackie's worst fear happens: Lange is shot down over enemy territory. He lucks into help from a Belgian escape line and spends months evading the enemy. When the escape line is broken by the German Gestapo in Paris, Lange's luck runs out. For the remainder of the war, his single, all-consuming desire is to survive and get back to Mackie.