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When two elderly Iowans, Ruth and Henry Gutterson, disappear mysteriously on their way home from Thanksgiving, their adult children face a shocking realization - that their parents planned this escape. In a crate of Ruth's letters, the majority addressed to Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Margaret and John Gutterson read of the origins of their parents' passion.
Henry and Ruth first met in 1924 when he crashed his Air Mail plane into the Sheehan cornfield. Young Ruth Sheehan, whose parents dispelled her dreams of going away to college, believes Henry will show her a world beyond tiny Cedar Bluff, Iowa. They fall in love, marry, and Ruth joins Henry on his mail route as a capable navigator. The birth of a son, however, puts Ruth back on the ground, alone. She discovers one salve to her restlessness besides infrequent jaunts with Henry: writing to Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Torn between her responsibilities as a mother and her spirit of adventure, she vows never to fly again. It is fifty-five years before Henry coaxes Ruth back into the cockpit, just before their disappearance, when they both remember what they've been missing.
