A vicar is disbelieving when two teenagers in his parish claim to have been given a message by the archangel Gabriel, but gradually changes his mind and decides he must do something about it.

Gil Erb was one of the men who flew the Navy's first jet, the first carrier qualified jet, the first supersonic carrier qualified jet and the first Mach 2 carrier qualified jet. He participated in two combat tours in Korea and then became a test pilot. He flew 43 different Navy aircraft and suffered a dozen near death experiences. His humorous as well as tragic life episodes are all chronicled in this biography. Gil has, over the three year course of our interviews, enthusiastically opened up about his flying days. The thrilling training, combat and test piloting episodes are interspersed with the humorous after-hours tales that seem to come with the fighter jock turf. The chapters include anecdotes from some of the seven original astronauts such as Alan Shepherd, Scott Carpenter and Wally Schirra; as well as Gil meeting Chuck Yeager and spending a day with Charles Lindbergh. Despite the name dropping, the author has tried to tell an honest "everyman's" story of what it was like to become one of the first pilots to fly jets on and off aircraft carriers and just how brave these men really were. The author also believes he has included in Gil's biography a little of how this kind of life typically affects a family. Dr. Peter Bartis of the Library of Congress' Veteran's History Project said the biography was "a beautifully documented history of Commander Erb." Dr. Dave Winkler of the Naval Historical Foundation has accepted the manuscript for inclusion in the Naval History and Heritage Command Archives and is forwarding it to several other Navy museums/libraries. Paul Gillcrist, the author of "Feet Wet", "Vulture's Row", and several other naval aviation novels said about the manuscript, "Once I started, I couldn't put it down. Congratulations! You have written a wonderful story."

"A lively, lucid, compelling account of complex and confusing events about which scholars are still puzzling".--WASHINGTON TIMES. This story of greed, violence, and death has entered American folklore through the mythologizing of the career of Billy the Kid and also through a tendency to see the Lincoln County War as emblematic of frontier lawlessness. Illustrations.

Rafaty celebrates the unusual but extremely common friendships between straight women and gay men, exploring why common interests, mutual respect and genuine affection are at the heart of these non-pressure relationships.