In THE ACE, four Americans - a 20-year-old social outcast, a breezily iconoclastic Army officer, a ruthless US senator, and a guilt-ridden heiress - are inexorably drawn together in their struggles to deal with America's chaotic involvement in World War I. Their interwoven destinies lead from poverty-stricken slums through the opulence of 1917-1918 Washington, London, and Paris, and, climactically, into the Western Front's vicious aerial combat, which establishes the matrix for all air warfare to come. THE ACE is, above all, an intricate portrayal of indomitable love belabored by human frailties and the cruel pressures of war.