The tale of "the brave men who pilot night mail planes from Patagonia, Chile, and Paraguay to Argentina in the early days of commercial aviation," mostly revealed through the perils and drama of a single night.
"She had cherished him, watched over him, caressed him, not for herself but for this night which was to take him. For struggles, fears, and victories which she would never know. Wild things they were, those hands of his, and only tamed to tenderness; their real task was dark to her. She knew this man's smile, his gentle ways of love, but not his godlike fury in the storm."
As noted in another de Saint-Exupery review: You cannot beat him for lyrical and intimate accounts of both the bliss and trials of early flight. The reading is like dreaming, and the language, whether plain-spoken or purely poetic, is haunting in the best romantic sort of way.