Captain Leo Waterhouse is a member of a crack team of soldiers under the command of the charismatic and volatile Major Doucette. They successfully carry out a daring covert operation in Singapore and make a heroes’ return to Australia, upon which Leo marries his childhood sweetheart Grace. After a short period of marital bliss, Doucette and his men are called on to undertake another mission, but Grace, the narrator, lets us know from the outset that there will not be a repeat of that glorious homecoming.
Keneally intercuts a tense account of the men going bravely and gamely to their deaths with the story of Grace, decades later, painstakingly piecing together the mysterious details of the fatal mission. The result – part thriller and part love story – is a haunting, elegiac work that reveals universal truths about the horrors of warfare. The folly of the commanding officers and politicians is also savaged. Yet Keneally never allows an ‘anti-war’ agenda to overpower the writing. He also unearths the humanity of those engaged in the brutality, as he investigates the nature of honour, heroism and the bonds formed by soldiers in war.
Meanwhile, Grace’s grief and confused desire for the truth are beautifully judged, and her occasional explosions of bitterness utterly believable.
