Victor Merkel

TailGunner-Pip Victor Merkel

Twenty years after WWII, Pip emerges as a young adult in 1960's England. He shoulders the burden of being a love child of Buck Remke, an American tail gunner and Ilona Laszlo, a Hungarian night club singer at a west London cabaret. Despite a horrific childhood, he is filled with hope in a decade where anything is possible. Pip has completed schooling at Wadsworth, a school for orphaned boys, and in this new era of freedom, chooses to attend Oxford. After years of struggle to find his son, Buck, the tail gunner from Pennsylvania, moved to London and pursued a successful career managing dance studios. When health issues strike his elderly mother, Buck brings Pip to the States to meet his family. The trip to Buck's home town, in the coal mining area of Pennsylvania endows Pip with the legacy he has been missing. Upon return to London, Pip enters medical school. Later, as a full fledged physician, he faces challenges and realizes that some of the same issues occurring in the Pennsylvania coal mining town will influence a decision for his future,