In the final year of World War II, the United States plucked nine farm boys from across the country and sent them off on a strange mission, one that would echo across the world. Today the impact of that mission is all over. From grocery stores to restaurants. American suburbs to frozen Arctic outposts. Even within the International Space Station. Yet the story of the farm boys who made it possible has been all but forgotten.

Here by the Owl is the untold true story of one of those farm boys, a native of the Blue Ridge Mountains named Robert Gray Shipley. In 1945, just as his pregnant wife Agnes is stricken with a deadly illness back home, he is flown to an island in the middle of the ocean. The Air Force calls it a "special mission." The purpose of that mission makes little sense. But even as he struggles to learn the fate of Agnes and their baby, he still has no idea of the horrifying reason why the leaders of the military have made his mission so vital.