RICHARD MCKENNA was born and raised in the small desert town of Mountain Home, Idaho. In 1931, at the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served for ten years in Asia. Two of those years were on a Yangtze River gunboat. During this time he heard many firsthand 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 on a large troop transport operating on all oceans, and stayed on through the Korean War on a destroyer. In 1953 he retired from the Navy after twenty-two years of service and entered the University of North Carolina. He received his degree in English in 1956, married one of the university librarians, and settled down in Chapel Hill to become a writer. He wrote short stories for the Saturday Evening Post, Argosy and other magazines. The Sand Pebbles was his first novel.

Mr. McKenna died unexpectedly from a coronary in 1964.