"The Sand Pebbles" was a first novel and the Harper Prize winner for 1962. McKenna is a prime stylist who wrote little else before his death (two volumes of essays and a book of Sci Fi stories which were SF award winners, and a couple of others). The story is exciting, detailed of life in the 1920s Navy and of life for American sailors in China at that time.The love stories are well-told, realistic, and of course sad.
