About this item
The story of the everyday heroism of bomber crews in 1944, a turning point in the war against Germany. Bomber combat crews faced a wide array of perils as they flew over German territory. Bursts of heavy flak could tear the wings from their planes in a split second. Flaming bullets from German fighter planes could explode their fuel tanks, cut their oxygen supplies, destroy their engines. Thousands of young men were shot, blown up, or thrown from their planes five miles above the earth; and even those who returned faced the subtler dangers of ice and fog as they tried to land their battered aircraft back home. The winter of 1944 was the most dangerous time to be a combat airman in RAF Bomber Command. The chances of surviving a tour were as low as one in five, and morale had finally hit rock bottom.
About the Author
Kevin Wilson is the author of two collections, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009) , which received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award, and Baby You're Gonna Be Mine (Ecco, 2018) , and three novels, The Family Fang (Ecco, 2011) , Perfect Little World (Ecco, 2017) and Nothing to See Here (Ecco, 2019) , a New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna book club selection. His new novel, Now is Not the Time to Panic, will be published by Ecco in November of 2022. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Southern Review, One Story, A Public Space, and elsewhere, and has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2020 and 2021, as well as The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the KHN Center for the Arts. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his sons, Griff and Patch, where he is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of the South.
