Author(s): Catherine McKinnon

Historical

From the author of the Miles Franklin Award shortlisted Storyland, comes a rich, layered and thrilling novel of love, war and friendship, To Sing of War.

December 1944: In New Guinea, a young Australian nurse, Lotte Wyld, chances upon her first love, Virgil Nicholson, there to fight the Japanese and keen to prove his worth as a man. Against the backdrop of a hard-fought jungle campaign, the two negotiate their troubled past.

Meanwhile, in Los Alamos, young physicists Miriam Carver and Fred Johnson join Robert Oppenheimer and a team of brilliant scientists in a collective dream to build a weapon that will stop all war, with Oppenheimer also juggling the competing demands of the American military and his clever wife, Kitty.

Far away, on the sacred island of Miyajima, Hiroko Narushima helps her husband's grandmother run a ryokan, however, when one of her daughters encounters danger, Hiroko must act to ensure her family's safety.

Each of these people yearns to belong, yet each fiercely protects their independence. Secrets, misunderstandings and fears burden them, shame shapes them, hope and imagination lift them up. They are caught in a moment of history, both enthralled and appalled by actions they must undertake.