During the author’s thirty-year career in publishing, I was never able to commission a novel, or a combat autobiography, that spanned the entire Pacific war. The reason: American units suffered such heavy casualties that no “fighting characters” survived multiple invasion landings. This publishing phenomenon was confirmed for me over the years by the agents Don Congden of the Harold Matson agency (Don was a Marine in the Pacific) and Jane Cushman of JCA Literary Agency. We all wanted such books.
