Wings Over Normandy

This novel is about one young man, of Irish Catholic descent, growing up in San Francisco of emigrant Irish parents and entering WWII shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. During his high school years he works, in his spare time, at the Fishermans wharf. He meets and falls in love with the daughter of a fishing boat skipper but one night as they are crossing the street to go to dinner at a small restaurant in the North Beach District a random bullet from China Town finds its mark in the chest of the girl he intends to build his life around and the event leaves the young man in state of anger and despair as the war breaks out. He joins the service and becomes a pilot of a B-26 medium bomber which eventually takes him to combat in Europe and his participation in the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944. While recuperating from wounds and emotional exhaustion suffered from a bombing mission in France he meets and falls in love with an Irish girl. The book, itself, is a work of historical fiction but stays close to the factual history of the WWII era with special reference to the war in Europe and the part played by the Eighth U.S. Air Force and the Royal Air Force of Great Britain.