All those things that had seemed so beautiful as I climbed away from the airfield in Lower Saxony now seemed my worst enemies. Below me lay the worst of them all, the heavy brutality of the North Sea, waiting to swallow up me and my plane and bury us for endless eternity in a liquid crypt where nothing moved, nor would ever move again. And no one would ever know.From the bestselling author of The Day of the Jacket, The Odessa File, and most recently, The Kill List comes this beautifully illustrated edition of a book unlike anything else Frederick Forsyth has ever written the story of a young fighter pilot in his most desperate hour of need, a tale at once suspenseful and inspirational.It s Christmas Eve 1957, and a young RAF pilot is heading home for the holiday flying his single-seat Vampire jet fighter high over the North Sea from Germany. As his mind drifts toward yuletide and home, he gradually realizes that he is flying into a pilot s worst nightmare. Both his compass and his radio have stopped working, leaving him totally cut off from the world.A thick, ground-hugging fog rolls in, erasing his view of the sea below as his aircraft hurtles through the darkness toward England. His fuel supply rapidly dwindling and bailout into the icy waters as sure a death as going down with the plane, it seems certain that this will be the young pilot s last Christmas.How he lives to tell the tale makes for a gem of a story, one whose power and beauty are sure to enthrall readers across the seasons for generations to come.The Shepherd is at once a white-knuckle, grippingly realistic aviation thriller and a deeply moving testament to man s enduring spirit, courage, and hope told as only Frederick Forsyth could tell it.