Edwards' biographical novella of Howard Rinehart traces the restless, nomadic, and sometimes tormented life of one of America's pioneer giants in the fields of aviation and exploration. Following his subject's career from his early days in Dayton and Brazil to his tragic suicide outside a Hattiesburg, Mississippi boardinghouse, the author portrays Rinehart as a man increasingly divorced by age and ill-health from his earlier pursuit of adventure and alarmingly out-of-step, not only with his homeland's political and social institutions in general, but with the U.S. aeronautical community in particular.