An Attractive Naivety - Australia as a new nation in a complex world
Image
| Image
|
Paperback - 15 July 2024
ISBN: 978-1-923122-86-4
by David Gormley-O'Brien (author)
On a hot and humid New Year’s Day 1901, in Sydney’s Centennial Park, a new nation is born, brought about not by war or revolution, nor secession, but rather by the ballot box. One nation, one destiny. Australia as a fledgling nation is eager to take her place on the world stage. But the world in the first half of the 20th century is an increasingly complex and hostile place.
An Attractive Naivety is a historical novel inspired by real people and events. It follows the lives of three generations of a working class Australian family living through this exciting and turbulent period. It is a time of marvellous achievements that include a world-first fully-scientific public health response to outbreaks of the bubonic plague in Sydney just prior to federation, the extensive network of the Sydney Tramway system, the largest in the southern hemisphere, and the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the largest bridge in the world at the time. It also includes the social pressures and upheavals that divided families during the Great War as well as the harsh working conditions on the wharves during the Great Depression, with the daily struggle just to put food on the table.
War clouds loom again on the horizon in the late 1930s and early 1940s when Japan seeks to expand its empire in Asia. Australia is threatened and woefully unprepared. Young Armistice Darcy becomes an army nurse and is posted to Malaya. Tragedy strikes at the fall of Singapore when she is evacuated and her ship is sunk by Japanese bombers. Her uncle, Norman Darcy, a tram driver as a civilian, finds himself posted as a guard at the Prisoner of War camp in Cowra, NSW, and is on duty when a thousand Japanese soldiers attempt a mass breakout one night in August 1944, the largest POW escape of any nation in modern times.
It is a story of resilience of individuals and the importance of family in the face of adversity and heartbreak.