Ashes & Sakura: An Australian story of the making of a Pacific nation (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781764199100)

Ashes and Sakura is the second novel in the Becoming Australia series, following on from An Attractive Naivety.

The story reunites readers with Tom and his sister Evelyn, both last seen in the earlier novel, as they face the upheavals of the postwar world.

Japan, 1946. Haunted by what he witnessed-and did-during the fighting, Australian soldier Tom joins the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in a nation devastated by defeat. In the ruins of Hiroshima, he meets Natsuko, a young Japanese woman cast adrift by hunger and shame. Their fragile bond offers a glimmer of meaning in the rubble.

Back home in country New South Wales, Evelyn faces a scandal of her own. Pregnant to Giovanni, an Italian prisoner of war once assigned to their family farm, she defies her father and the small-town whispers to keep the child. With her mind made up-and help from the local priest-she sets out to find Giovanni and build a future on her own terms.

Ashes and Sakura is a tender story of love, shame, and the struggle for good in a world that has been torn apart. A novel about what war destroys-and what might still be mended in its wake.