On Wings of the Morning

Book excerpt: Young Otto Kerchner dreams of escaping his father’s Wisconsin dairy farm and becoming a flier like his hero Charles Lindbergh. When a small airport is built on an adjoining property, Otto trades odd jobs for flight lessons and becomes a pilot at 16. When World War II breaks out, he enlists in the Army Air Corps and finds himself a year later high over Germany at the controls of a B-17. Otto and his crew fly 23 missions untouched, but then his world shatters, and he must draw on reserves of faith and courage he never imagined. On Wings of the Morning brings to life the ordinary men and women of the Greatest Generation who, stirred by fate and fortune, accomplished extraordinary things. Faithful in its depiction of events and evocative across a spectrum of emotions, this gentle but incisive tale will engage, inform and move readers of all ages.