There’s real despair in Bennett’s Corners, Ohio. It’s 1934, and The Great Depression is dragging on. That’s not to say young people don’t have their big burning ambitions, their uncontrollable urges. They do. Will Randall’s dream is to go to the Chicago World’s Fair, to see the technological wonders of the modern age and to prepare himself for the glorious future sure to erupt once FDR gets a handle on things. Ace Gilbert had a different dream. He wants to find a “willing city girl”. So, on a scorching August day these two very-best-of-friends set out for Chicago in Ace’s old Model T, which has been transformed with wings and a propeller to look like the Spad SXIII his father flew in The Great War. This is going to be the best week of their lives, even if Will’s little brother—and his ear-ache—have to come along. Driving across the Indiana cornfields, they’re kidnapped by a pair of penny candy criminals, Gus Gillis and Gladys Batholomew, and thus begins an adventure none of them had bargained for. At times, Aces’s narrative is wickedly funny, at other times tearful. And sometimes, his bewilderment comes to full boil. Going to Chicago is much more than a period romp across the American heartland. It’s a journey into friendship—a friendship bigger than death.
