When fifteen-year-old Mathew Dale Mitchell sees his first airplane in 1910 in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, he is hooked. When he is old enough, he joins the US Air Corps and, as a first lieutenant, begins flying as a fighter pilot in World War I. On a mission over German lines, Mitchell doesn't return to base in Cerlot, France. Inexplicably, he lands in Pawtucket, Delaware, in the year 2000. Here, he discovers important information about what happened to his family while he served in the war. He has an eighty-two-year-old son and two forty-something grandchildren. He decides not to meet them, and he returns to Cerlot to continue his role as a fighter pilot. As it turns out, however, Mathew's son, Fred, follows in his father's footsteps in more ways than one. He joins the army and serves in World War II, seeing action in North Africa. And he too has time travel experiences-some of which hold some unusual surprises.