The Happy Life of Preston Katt: A Novel

It is December 7, 1941, in Pearl Harbor when Seaman Second Class Preston Katt sneaks back aboard the USS Callahan after a night of debauchery with a fellow trouble-seeking seaman. After a short night, Katt awakens with a hangover. Two hours after reveille, the Japanese attack.

Katt had enlisted in the Navy to escape Saint Ambrose, Missouri, and his alcoholic momma. But now, in a matter of moments, as World War II escalates into a monumental worldwide battle, his life hangs in the balance as bombs, bullets, and torpedoes whizz past him. As the skies fill with flak bursts, tracers, and diving Japanese bombers, Katt serves as a lookout, a role that quickly propels him into the atrocities of war. Soon weighed down by the deaths of sailors at Pearl Harbor and other battles, Katt is sent back to the States to work. But he is determined to return to the war and fight the Japanese on behalf of all those who died.

In this historical tale, a young sailor must confront Japanese bombs and torpedoes, his own conscience, and a typhoon as he fights in nearly every major battle in the Pacific during World War II.