The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Eugene Bullard (1895-1961) fled home at the age of eleven to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. In Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African American fighter pilot in history. After World War I, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero, but as Phil Keith and the author of Lightning Down relate here, little did he know that the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun.