The Divine Wind

Description

'an outstanding piece of writing...a powerful novel...' Reading Time Friendship is a slippery notion. We lose friends as we change and our friends don't, or as we form other alliances, or as we betray our friends or are ourselves betrayed... Set against the backdrop of World War II, four teens growing up in the pearling town of Broome form a deep friendship that will change their lives forever. Hartley and Alice Penrose are the children of a pearling master. Mitsy Sennosuke is the daughter of a Japanese diver. Jamie and his family have just moved to town. Together, they unconsciously cross the boundaries of class and race, as they swim, joke and watch films in the tin cinema on Sheba Lane. Soon, two of them will fall in love. But these happy, untroubled times end when lives are lost in a terrible cyclone, and townsfolk turn against the Sennosukes. When Japanese bombs begin to fall in northern Australia, loyalties are divided and friendships take on an altogether different form... In this beautifully written novel, Garry Disher evokes a war-devastated Australia and its effects on young adults forced to leave their childhood behind.

GARRY DISHER grew up on a wheat and wool farm in South Australia. He has an MA in Australian History and has lived, worked and travelled in England, Italy, Israel, the USA and southern Africa. In 1978 he was awarded a creative writing fellowship to Stanford University, where he wrote his first collection of short stories. Garry worked as a writing lecturer between the years 1980 and 1988, before becoming a full-time writer. He has published over fifty books, including short story collections, literary novels, writers' handbooks and award-winning crime thrillers and children's titles.

...wonderfully moving, exact and economical one of the best books I read in 1999. - TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT