The Ace — Jack D. Hunter

The Ace is a sweeping story of four Americans caught up in aviation history of the war. The central character, John King, is a young first-generation American who is the target of hatred and prejudice by his neighbors suspicious of his German heritage. The course of his life is radically altered when Captain William Carpenter crashes a test plane in King's neighborhood, and King pulls Carpenter from the burning wreckage. Thaddeus Slater is a ruthless power-hungry Congressman who clears see the opportunity to make a fortune and advance his career through the war and its need for aviation. Mary Lou Whitting is a beautiful young heiress to a Main Line Philadelphia fortune who struggles against her guilt over unearned riches and an exasperating love for the strange, taciturn, haunted John King. Each of the four becomes unwittingly drawn into crisscrossed relationships as King reluctantly rises to renown as an aerial warrior.