The Sand Pebbles - Paperback

Richard McKenna was born in the small desert town of Mountain Home, Idaho. In 1931, at the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the Navy and served for ten years in the Far East, two of them on a Yangtze River gunboat. During this time he heard many first-hand accounts of the 1925-1927 Chinese revolution which he put to use in The Sand Pebbles. Mr. McKenna, a machinist's mate, served in World War II in a large troop transport operating in all oceans, and stayed on through the Korean War in a destroyer. He wrote short stories for the Satur­day Evening Post, Argosy and other magazines. The Sand Pebbles was his first novel. He died in 1964.