1919. The Great War has ended, but a new kind of hero is rising over the Montana sky. Johnny Jewel is a young pilot with a stolen airplane, a mountain of debt to his future father-in-law, and a fierce conviction: he won't marry Mary V Selmer until he's earned the right. Rejected by the military for being too young, Johnny gambles everything on his dreams of flight, chasing fortune in a world that still believes the frontier belongs to horsemen, not to daredevils in flying machines. But theThunder Bird, the legendary creature of Blackfeet legend, watches from the mountaintops, and Johnny's debts keep mounting. This is an adventure novel wrapped in a love story, or perhaps the reverse: either way, B.M. Bower captures a moment when the old West was dying and something wild was taking its place. The romance is patient and proud, the flying sequences crackle with early aviation's raw danger, and Johnny's struggle to become worthy of love feels startlingly modern.
