Part One

Berg starts Lindbergh with a brief chapter about the high point of the aviator's life, his arrival in Paris on May 21, 1927, using this moment in his story to summarize many of the important events that are to come. The statement that Lindbergh believed that this flight had started long before its takeoff thirty-three hours earlier, that it began generations earlier "with some Norsemen—infused with the Viking spirit—" is used to catapult the story back to the time of Lindbergh's grandfather and to follow, thereafter, chronologically from Norway in 1859. Lindbergh's grandfather was a swindler named Ola Månsson who, when it was time to flee Sweden, offered to take his wife and children. When they refused, he took his mistress and their illegitimate son. During their passage to America, he changed his name to August Lindbergh and the baby's name to Charles.

Lindbergh's father, Charles...