Page 138 "His father was a blue-jacket..."

Clockwise from top left: the 7.2 rocket; preparing rockets for launching on DDay; a row of rockets ready for fire (early prototype version). This was the "Woofus" rocket launcher; a converted PT boat into rocketboat; the lone sailor statue at the Navy Memorial in Washington, DC.

Photo of the rocket boat courtesy of Mike Virgintino and http://www.suite101.com/

For further reading, I suggest: http://www.suite101.com/content/rocketboatmen-are-unsung-heroes-of-d-day-a216545

Interesting note:  The statue of The Lone Sailor is constructed from pieces of copper sheeting, spikes, hammock hooks & other fragments from the post-revolutionary frigates USS Constitution and USS Constellation; from the USS Hartford (flagship of Admiral Farragut in the Civil War era), from the USS Maine, the USS Ranger, and from the USS Biloxi, as well as from USS Hancock the submarine USS Seawolf.

More:  Receiving little attention over the last 65 years, rocketboatmen were the first Navy crews in daylight to approach the Omaha and Utah beaches. They deployed 30 minutes before the first wave of infantry troops. Some left their flat bottom boats and fought head-to-head with the German machine gun nests, successfully neutralizing them. Many of those brave men took their war stories of that day with them to their graves.  One rocketboatman, Yogi Berra, beloved baseball star...got closer to the beach than the hitter is to the left field wall in Fenway Park. “Nobody knew about rocket boats. We were a secret mission as part of the invasion. We moved quick, shot rockets 300 yards from the shore, and didn’t have time to be scared.”
(Text copyright by Mike Virgintino.  Used by Permission.)

From page 138 of the book:  "...His father was a blue-jacket, in line for a petty officer rating when he'd operated what was described in 1944 as one of the "most secret of naval weapons," and which had played a key role in the blasting of German defenses along the French beaches of Normandy. They were large landing ships, redesigned from carrying tanks to providing rocket fire as primary bombardments began prior to the landing of Allied troops. The noise of those rockets, firing 60 times a minute and never ceasing for hours, had nearly driven him crazy. Hours on end that even plugs and heavy muffs over his ears couldn't dim the noise. His skin had absorbed the blasts as the missiles sped out of their cylinders, never ceasing, always louder and louder."

Page 142 "Next to it hung Mantegna's "Dead Christ"

Andrea Mantegna's "Dead Christ," c. 1500, tempera on canvas, 27' x 32"
An excellent example of foreshortening, a process of perspective used on the human figure.
It creates confrontation with the viewer and a psychological mood.

Caravaggio's "Conversion of St. Paul"
1600-1601; Oil on canvas
Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popola, Rome

From page 142 of the book:  "...Why didn't Owen tell Sylvester about what Thomas had intended to do at the outset of the plan? I'd looked to my print of Titian's "Man With a Glove," which hung in the center of the wall facing me. I'd bought it in front of the Museum of Modern Art one day while shopping with Sarah. That portrait had grabbed my attention like a hook; I was in love with the man's eyes. Next to it hung Mantegna's "Dead Christ," with its foreshortened perspective of the Savior's body: the feet were in the foreground, drawing my eye backward toward His head, as if I were watching an MRI being performed. To the right of the Titian hung Caravaggio's "Conversion of St. Paul,” the second one, with Paul lying on his back, limbs raised upward, facing his indifferent horse. I'd begun to refer to these objects within their and my own immediacy as consolation against my sometimes ungovernable states of mind: I'd known from way back, from deep inside my Connecticut backwoods, that I'd stepped on the perimeters of lunacy and needed a standard by which to measure myself."