AustLit

'Sister Vivian Bullwinkel was the only survivor of the Bangka Island massacre during World War II. Her evocative story is told through the eyes of fifteen-year-old Edith ‘Edie’ Kenneison.

'Sister Bullwinkel enlisted in the Australian Army Nurse Service at the outbreak of World War II and was posted to Singapore. In February 1942, she and hundreds of others attempted to escape the advancing Japanese army but was captured and held as a prisoner of war. Vivian spent the next three years in captivity, working tirelessly to help her fellow prisoners. One of those prisoners was young Edie. Their remarkable friendship would help them survive and became the basis of a lifelong bond.'  (Publication summary)

'Sarah of Enderslea Farm, Red Flowering Gums, and River Dreaming are three plays, one set in the early Swan River Colony and the others as examinations of later colonial and society attitudes.

'The authors have set the scene with a Foreword and Introduction placing the real life characters in the correct historical, geographical and social context.' (Publication summary)

'Funny, acutely observed insights into love and life during the Second World War. How could I let you go away without knowing where you are going?. How shall I manage tonight? Our first night not knowing when we'll see each other again.

'Between 1941 and 1945 Wynne Brooks waited for her young soldier husband Mickey to return to her. In all the time he was away she wrote to him, first daily, then weekly, never knowing his whereabouts. In 1945, at the end of the war, her letters were returned, their messages of comfort and love unread, bearing the War Office stamp 'No Trace'.

'Wynne's letters, discovered by her niece Jenny Davis in 1988, offer a valuable glimpse into the hearts and minds of the women waiting at home, facing each day without news, and dreading - but also hoping for - the knock on the door from the telegraph boy.

'Dear Heart is an exquisite, true-life account of an exceptional love that knows no boundaries of time and place.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.