Biplane was Richard Bach's second novel, written in 1962. Like almost all of his other books, it is autobiographical, at least in theory, and tells of the author trading his sleek modern airplane for an antique biplane he doesn't really know how to fly. He has to fly the biplane from North Carolina to his home in California, and the book tells of his struggles and learning along the way. The trip takes about a week, and he is delayed even further when he crashes the plane landing in a crosswind.
Biplane features an introduction by Ray Bradbury, who says "Richard Bach does not fly, just as his great-great-great-grandaddy Johann Sebastian Bach did not write music: he exhaled it." If you think you can't find purpose and meaning in flight, or that you can't be charmed senseless by reading a novel whose two principle characters are a man and his airplane, I challenge you to read this book. I would also say that Bach's talent shines more brightly in his early works, which are dominated by airplanes, with just a bit of philosophy peeking in the corners, than his later work. Whenever he gets too far away from flying it starts to seem strained.