Flight of the Setting Sun

Flight of the Setting Sun is an action adventure love story; a 568-page historical fiction novel covering four decades. The story of Captain Jake Martin, heir to a Texas oil fortune and China Clipper pilot, tells of his exploits piloting experimental flying boats in the 1930s, P-40 fighter planes in prewar Burma, B-17 bomber raids and espionage flights into wartime Europe. A friend and associate of Juan Tripp and Howard Hughes, Jake becomes an aviation industrialist during and after W.W.II and the designing one of the first American corporate jets. The story begins in 1926 when Jake is eleven years old and concludes in the 1960s. This story captures the true feeling of the glory years of aeronautical development from Jenny to the jet. Jake's life adventure takes him from Texas to New York, California, to the Asian Pacific and to wartime London. It is not just a tale of adventure, but a story of one man's struggle to deal with a failed marriage to the wrong woman, raising two young children on his own and the loss of the young girl he called the Dragon Lady he met and fell in love with in 1941 Burma. Jake Martin was a man given a passion for flight when he was very young and lived the life that was dealt him as a result of that passion. This is a story of choices, the choices that each of us makes in our lives that define who we are and what we become.