THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER: "Beautifully told. "--CNN - "A remarkable story... worth retelling and celebrating. "--USA Today - "Oh, it's a good one!"--Fox News A "beautiful story of a brotherhood between enemies" emerges from the horrors of World War II in this New York Times bestseller by the author of Devotion, now a Major Motion Picture. December, 1943 A badly damaged American bomber struggles to fly over wartime Germany. At the controls is twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown. Half his crew lay wounded or dead on this, their first mission. Suddenly, a Messerschmitt fighter pulls up on the bomber's tail. The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler--and he can destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger... What happened next would defy imagination and later be called "the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II. " The U. S. 8th Air Force would later classify what happened between them as "top secret. " It was an act that Franz could never mention for fear of facing a firing squad. It was the encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they would search the world for each other, a last mission that could change their lives forever.