Portholes to Life

About the Book

This compelling, exciting, and different historic novel tells of the harrowing ordeal of a civil war widow the author’s Great-grandmother, a civil war widow and her hard, harrowing trip to Iowa with her children. Two love stories and the marriages of two sets of the author’s grandparents with their covered wagons on the Oregon Trail to Oregon Territory. To the birth in a log cabin and early life of the author. On December 7th 1941, Japanese Navy in a sneak attack sank the U.S.S. Oklahoma on “Battleship Row” in Pearl Harbor. This attack sank the battleships U.S.S. Arizona, US.S. Oklahoma, U.S.S. Utah and most of the U.S. Navy’s ships in the Pacific Ocean, as well as the destruction of the airplanes at Hickam Field and North Island Hawaii December 7th, 1941, The author was trapped inside the ship as the Oklahoma was torpedoed, strafed, rolled over and sank. The novel ends with the Author’s death defying, terrifying escape though a 21 inch Porthole four long hours after the ship was torpedoed, rolled over and sank into the black depths of Pearl Harbor. As President Franklin D Roosevelt said, “A day that will live in infamy” as the United States went to war against the Japanese Empire. “Gene Dick is the real deal — a decorated World War II warrior whose adventures, insights, and naval exploits make for a rousing good tale. Enjoy!” —Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Spies, The Last Spymaster, and others

About the Author

Gene Dick is a ninety-year-old World War II veteran and retired from the US Navy as a CWO. He was on the USS Oklahoma when it was sunk in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.