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A Rose for the Anzac Boys (Jackie French, Angus & Robertson, $15.99 pb, ISBN 9780732285401, April) ****

Jackie French believes that good, historical writing really needs to come from source documents: things written at the time that give the feeling of the world as it was then, not just the facts. In her latest work of historical fiction, she has put this into practice, drawing on letters, diaries and oral history from World War I to record the lives of women who worked as volunteers on the home front and behind the front line. This is the story of 16-year old Margery (‘Midge’) Macpherson, who has been sent to finishing school in England following the death of her parents, leaving behind her beloved farm in New Zealand. She forms a close friendship with two other girls, one of whom comes from an aristocratic family, who give their support to the girls’ idea of setting up a canteen at Calais for the hundreds of soldiers now on the march. When news reaches Midge that her twin brother has been reported missing in action in Gallipoli, and letters from a dear aunt who is nursing wounded soldiers in Alexandria describe the horrors she is witnessing, she begins to realise that war is not the ‘glorious adventure’ she had thought. This is a well-researched story about the invaluable support women provided during the war. Recommended for secondary-school age children.

Hilary Adams is a freelance writer and reviewer and works in a specialist children’s bookshop in Sydney

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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