After his wife dies in a tragic accident, astronaut Jeff Tracy is left with five young sons to raise. But he turns his grief into a dream: to create an organization which will rescue people that no one else can reach. He builds a business which creates the new technology that the organization will require and earns  the billions he needs to finance it. At last, he is ready to put it all together. He enlists the services of a genius to design aircraft and supporting machinery far beyond the standards of his time. Together, they find a South Pacific island to use as the base of their operations. Then he asks his five sons, now grown, to give up promising careers to build the base, operate the machines, and serve in his organization. But he finds that in order to make his dream a reality, it will require sacrifice, courage, and determination...far beyond what he, or his sons, ever expected. Can they make International Rescue a reality, and what will it take to make the fantastic Thunderbirds machines GO?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joan Marie Verba earned a bachelor of physics degree from the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology and attended the graduate school of astronomy at Indiana University, where she was an associate instructor of astronomy for one year. Her first career, as a computer programmer, lasted ten years. After being laid off twice from computer programming jobs, she retrained as an editor and currently works as one. An experienced writer, she is the author of Voyager: Exploring the Outer Planets (Lerner Books, 1991), as well as numerous short stories and articles. She is one of the authors of the novel, Autumn World (Stone Dragon Press, 2000), which she wrote in collaboration with Tess Meara, Deborah K. Jones, Margaret Howes, and Ruth Berman. She is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.