A Family Duty

But McCain's tenure at the academy was turbulent. "I was really rebellious," he says. "I mean, really rebellious." He partied, piled up demerits for misconduct, romanced a Brazilian fashion model, almost quit school and wound up graduating fifth from the bottom of his class. "I hated the place," he wrote.

Frank Gamboa, a retired Navy captain who roomed with McCain at the academy for three years, watched him struggle with his father's expectations. "He resisted the weight of the legacy," says Gamboa, who, as the son of Mexican immigrants from a small town in California, couldn't have come from a more different background. At the same time, Gamboa adds, McCain was proud of his family.

His pride finally won out over his resentment, McCain says, as he matured. As a student, he was steeped in naval warfare in history class, and he rubbed shoulders with the aging heroes of World War II who taught and worked at the academy. His father had fought in that war, too, "and I wanted to know what it was like," McCain says.

His father, a diminutive, cigar-smoking man who was also known as Jack, told him about the three submarines he had commanded. He told him about hunting Japanese warships and being hunted by them. He told him about being depth-charged for hours amid the foul air and tension of a cramped submerged sub.

In one battle, his father's boat remained underwater for 18 hours, eluding enemy warships. Almost out of oxygen, it surfaced with its suffocating crew to fight it out, only to find that the Japanese had given up the chase.

His father told the stories in a matter-of-fact manner, which McCain took as a sign of respect. "I had his trust that I would prepare myself for my turn at war," McCain wrote. "I admired him, and wanted badly to be admired by him."

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McCain's test would come as a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War, when an antiaircraft missile blew the right wing off his jet on Oct. 26, 1967, and he had to eject over Hanoi. His ordeal would last years, break his body and mind, drive him to attempt suicide, make him a national hero, and help ruin his first marriage.

It would also expose his father to an exquisite agony.

McCain's capture generated headlines across the United States. His picture ran on the front page of The Washington Post, with the headline "Held in Hanoi." He was filmed in an enemy hospital, and a copy of the footage was shown to his anguished parents. His father, McCain says, "got down every night and prayed."

A few months into McCain's imprisonment, his father was named the Pentagon's commander in chief for the Pacific, a job that essentially put him in charge of prosecuting the war. His father insisted that his change-of-command ceremony be held aboard the USS Oriskany, the carrier for McCain's squadron.

Throughout McCain's imprisonment, his father never penned him a letter, knowing that the enemy would use it for propaganda. But every Christmas, the elder McCain would fly to Vietnam and visit Marines near the demilitarized zone that then separated North and South Vietnam. At some point, McCain wrote, the admiral would walk off by himself and look out to the north over the frontier. He was searching for his son.