A young musician and poet, Michael O'Donnell served as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Although he never fired a shot in combat, his best-known poem is among the most beloved of the war. During a 1970 attempt to rescue fellow soldiers stranded under heavy fire, O'Donnell's helicopter was shot down in the jungles of Cambodia, and his body remained missing for almost three decades. In Daniel Weiss's powerful telling, O'Donnell's life is both a personal story and a universal one about how America lost its way in the 1960s, but also how hope can flower in the margins of even the darkest chapters of history.