author
Richard McKenna
1913–1964
A former Navy machinist who turned hard-earned experience into memorable fiction, he is best known for The Sand Pebbles, a novel shaped by years spent serving in Asia. He also wrote science fiction, bringing the same practical eye and human feeling to shorter work.
3 Audiobooks
The Night of Hoggy Darn
by Richard McKenna
Love and Moondogs
by Richard McKenna
The Fishdollar Affair
by Richard McKenna
About the author
Born in Mountain Home, Idaho, in 1913, Richard Milton McKenna joined the U.S. Navy during the Depression and spent more than two decades in service. His naval career, including time in Asia and on a Yangtze River gunboat, gave him the material that later made his fiction feel so vivid and lived-in.
After retiring from the Navy, he studied literature and began publishing stories in the late 1950s. Alongside science fiction, he wrote the historical novel The Sand Pebbles (1963), the book most closely associated with his name.
McKenna died in 1964, not long after his best-known novel appeared. His work is still remembered for its strong sense of place, its sympathy for working sailors, and its ability to turn firsthand experience into absorbing storytelling.