Pub Date: 2010-05-18 Pages: 400 Language: English Publisher: HarperCollins US One of the most admired and honored of our contemporary literary artists. author John Crowley now brilliantly re-creates a time in America when ordinary people were asked to sacrifice their comforts and uproot their lives for the cause of freedom. In the early years of the 1940s. as the nations young men ship off to war. the call goes out for builders of the machinery necessary to defeat the enemy. To this purpose. a city ??has sprung up seemingly overnight in the windswept fields of Oklahoma: the Van Damme airplane factory. a gargantuan complex dedicated to the construction of the B-30 Pax. the largest bomber ever built Laborers-some men. but mostly women. many of. whom have never operated a rivet gun or held a screwdriver-flock to this place. eager to earn. to grow. to do their part. Many are awa...