Take Hemingway's most macho man multiplied to the fifth power and you begin to see the hero of To the White Sea, a hunter and survivor whose world has no place for women. Then place him in psychological territory reminiscent of Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902), and you have tail-gunner Muldrow, shot down but not out over Tokyo, cutting a swath across Japan in his wartime adventures, part human, part wolverine, and part poet.

Muldrow is a loner, regarded by his Air Force colleagues with a mixture of awe and fear. He seems entirely detached from the events from the war, calmly going over the contents of his survival kit, shooting down planes with cool calculation, and measuring everything and everyone in terms of what he can "use."

Yet Muldrow also is exceptionally attuned to beauty, to grace, to small moments that others might not notice.

For instance, he...