When two elderly Iowans, Ruth and Henry Gutterson, disappear mysteriously on their way home from Thanksgiving, their adult children find a crate of Ruth's letters written to Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In the letters the children read of the origins of their parents' passion: how they first met in 1924 when Henry crashed his Air Mail plane into Ruth's family's cornfield; how Ruth flew alongside Henry as his navigator; about Ruth's passion for flying; and how the birth of her children kept her on the ground.