God's Helicopter is a young-adult novel by the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer Lee Gutkind

Lee Gutkind

Lee Gutkind is an American writer.Gurkind is the founder of the literary magazine Creative Nonfiction and the author or editor of over a dozen books. He started the first ever MFA program in creative nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh...

.

It is set in 1950s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 when Dwight Eisenhower was president, Ralph Kiner

Ralph Kiner

Ralph McPherran Kiner is an American former Major League Baseball player and has been an announcer for the New York Mets since the team's inception. Though injuries forced his retirement from active play after 10 seasons, Kiner's tremendous slugging outpaced nearly all of his National League...

 was the left fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates

Pittsburgh Pirates

The Pittsburgh Pirates are a Major League Baseball club based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They play in the Central Division of the National League, and are five-time World Series Champions...

and the greatest man to ever live, according to the twelve-year-old Willie Heinemann, protagonist of this novel. His friend Ronald Middlebaum, however, fights a life-threatening illness and Willie seeks to understand a God who wants Middlebaum dead.