He had a physical condition he believed would disqualify him. He grew up amid what he calls “the family burning flames of alcohol.” And the airline cockpit he dreamed of seemed impossibly far away.

None of it changed the one thing Russ Roberts knew from childhood: he would be a pilot.

In this candid memoir, Roberts tells how a boy’s steadfast love of airplanes carried him through a turbulent childhood and eventually taught him to chart his own course. Kirkus Reviews calls the book “a thoughtful and detailed remembrance of a life in flight” and observes that, in Roberts’ vivid telling, “he was always a pilot at heart.”

As a boy, Roberts gives himself over to the world of hangars, cockpits, and the men who fly. He gathers what wisdom he can from his father and from the other pilots who take him under their wings. He earns his pilot’s license before he is old enough to drive on the road. At seventeen, he becomes the youngest licensed flight instructor in the United States.

But the airline cockpit remains out of reach.

His journey takes him from the skies of Alaska to the East Coast, then across the North Atlantic to Greenland, Iceland, and Europe. Along the way, the lessons become about more than airplanes.

This is also the story of a family strained by religion, alcohol, and money, and of a son trying to decide how much of what he inherited should determine the man he becomes.

Everything converges over the North Atlantic, in a single-engine airplane with a broken compass and ice forming on the wings. Continuing means more than finding a way through the weather. Roberts must begin questioning some of the beliefs that have guided him since childhood—and decide for himself which ones are still worth carrying.

To become the pilot he wants to be, he must first unlearn.

Settle into the cockpit and listen. You will feel the wonder of first flight, and the price of earning the sky.