Mary C. McCall, Jr. McCall, as a flex against the patriarchy her father specifically was a busy and well-paid writer of magazine fiction when she decided to take on a longer piece, a novel. Looking around for material, she thought of her girlhood friend, Elisabeth Morrow, whose sister Anne had recently married the most famous man in America: Charles Lindbergh. Like any newspaper reader or radio listener of the day, McCall knew that Lindbergh and his wife were subject to relentless scrutiny, but unlike most of them, she also heard from Elisabeth what it was like to be the objects of this attention.
It was, she said, like living in a goldfish bowl, exposed on all side β an analogy that got credited to Irvin S. Cobb but originally came from a story by Saki. Forty men were trapped aboard and though divers were able to locate and communicate with crewmen through tapping on the hull, all hands died before the sub could be raised.
McCall turned this tragedy into a story of heroism. After his sub is struck and sunk by a yacht, Lieutenant Scotty McClenahan comes up with the idea of ejecting the crewmen through the torpedo tubes, allowing them to make it to the surface.
The catch, though, is that the last man aboard would be unable to trigger the firing of the tube. Scotty volunteers to be the one to stay behind and accepts his certain death, only to be rescued at the last moment by Navy divers. All of this happens before the book opens. We meet Scotty as he comes to aboard the Navy destroyer after the rescue. Football hero, laying down his life for his brothers.
Two days, trapped in a watery tomb. Raised from the dead. Every school teacher has fallen asleep thinking of running her fingers through your hair. As the destroyer pulls into New York harbor, dozens of reporters and a newsreel camera crew come aboard to get his story.
