Coach Joe Bartkowski stuns the basketball world when he leads a small college team to the national championships. Now sought after by major universities, Joe finds his career threatened by unexplained anxiety and panic attacks. Is it a midlife crisis as his therapist claims, or does the answer lie in his family's history? Spanning three generations, from the Eastern Front in World War One through the Siberian gulags to the battlefields of World War Two, When Eagles Die embraces Joe's painful search for the truth, his unexpected discoveries about himself, and the very nature of the human mind.