Flight of the Setting Sun is an action adventure love story; a 568-page historical fiction novel covering four decades. The story of Captain Jake Martin, heir to a Texas oil fortune and China Clipper pilot, tells of his exploits piloting experimental flying boats in the 1930s, P-40 fighter planes in prewar Burma, B-17 bomber raids and espionage flights into wartime Europe. A friend and associate of Juan Tripp and Howard Hughes, Jake becomes an aviation industrialist during and after W.W.II and the designing one of the first American corporate jets. The story begins in 1926 when Jake is eleven years old and concludes in the 1960s. This story captures the true feeling of the glory years of aeronautical development from Jenny to the jet. Jake's life adventure takes him from Texas to New York, California, to the Asian Pacific and to wartime London. It is not just a tale of adventure, but a story of one man's struggle to deal with a failed marriage to the wrong woman, raising two young children on his own and the loss of the young girl he called the Dragon Lady he met and fell in love with in 1941 Burma. Jake Martin was a man given a passion for flight when he was very young and lived the life that was dealt him as a result of that passion. This is a story of choices, the choices that each of us makes in our lives that define who we are and what we become.
About the Author: Author Marvin Arnold spent many summers on his grandfather's ranch in Oklahoma. The early part of this novel reflects his memories of the Red River Valley and working in the Texas oil fields. He attended high school near Wright-Patterson AFB where his father had been assigned after WWII. It was here, playing in the boneyard of captured German and Japanese airplanes of ARDC along with befriending the rocketeers from Peenemunde that the author became fascinated with aeronautics. Many aspects of this novel are based on first-hand stories told to him by relatives and family friends returning from WWII. At age 17, the author enlisted in the Naval Air Reserve at Port Columbus Ohio. In the late 1950s, he returned to Oklahoma to attend OU and OCU. Arnold's military experience included Air Force ROTC, tour of duty as an ASW aircrew instructor in a P2V patrol squadron, as a pilot with the National Guard and as an officer in the State Guard. The author learned to fly in his late teens in an aero club based at Max Westheimer Field. Burrell Tibbs, his seventy-year-old instructor had taught Wiley Post to fly years earlier. Arnold holds a commercial license with multi-engine, instrument and seaplane ratings, Captain Arnold flew over 6,000 hours in dozens of aircraft types including air charter in twin Cessna and the Douglas DC3 aircraft. The author and his family are lifelong residents of Texas. His experiences as an aerospace design engineer, as Chief of Avionics Engineering for Aerospatiale plus his avid interest in aviation history enhance the detail and authenticity of the fictional aviation empire in this novel.