James A. Michener · 1947 · sea

James Michener's first book, written while he was a naval historian in the New Hebrides, and the source of South Pacific. Nineteen linked stories about the long stretches of boredom between operations - planters, nurses, Seabees and a French planter's daughters - and then the landing that most of the characters do not come back from.

1. 1
   Norfolk Island

   The Seabees cut an airstrip out of an island of Bounty descendants and Norfolk pines, and the war arrives in places that had contrived to miss the previous century entirely.

2. 2
   Espiritu Santo

   The great base in the New Hebrides is where most of the book happens - a harbour full of shipping, a mud of quonset huts, and men waiting months for an operation nobody will name.

3. 3
   Bali-ha'i

   Across the channel lies the island where the French planters have hidden their daughters from the American army - and the story that became the musical's centre is at bottom about race, and does not resolve comfortably.

4. 4
   Guadalcanal

   The landing finally comes, and the last stories are about the men who ran the beach - and Michener's flat, reportorial account of what it cost is the reason the book won a Pulitzer.