Ashes & Sakura - an Australian story of the making of a Pacific nation

Ashes & Sakura: an Australian story in the making of a Pacific nation

Paperback - August 2025

ISBN: 978-1-7641991-0-0

by David Gormley-O'Brien (author)

From the author of An Attractive Naivety comes a powerful companion novel following Tom and his sister Evelyn—both last seen in that earlier tale—as they face the long aftermath of war.

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, clear-eyed story of love, shame, and quiet resistance. A novel about what war destroys—and what might still be mended in its wake.