In 1971 a man calling himself D.B. Cooper hijacked a flight, claimed his ransom without harming a soul and vanished. He parachuted out of the plane over the dense woods of the Pacific Northwest with $200,000 strapped to his body. Elwood Reid uses this true story as a starting point, imagining Cooper as Phil Fitch, a Vietnam vet with a failed marriage who decides the time has come to do something that will save him from a life of punching time cards and wondering what could have been. Fitch ends up in Mexico, where he drifts until a turn of bad luck forces him to return home.

Meanwhile, retired FBI agent Frank Marshall, struggling with his new life of leisure – fishing, drinking too much, tempted to embark on an affair with a female witness -- decides to help a young agent determined to solve the case of D.B. Cooper. An odyssey, a manhunt, a gripping and frequently hilarious tale.