Becoming Australia series: books by David Gormley-O'Brien
The Human Stories That Shaped a Nation
The Becoming Australia series explores the defining events and experiences of the first half of the twentieth century through the lives of ordinary Australians caught in extraordinary times.
From the bubonic plague to the post-war occupation of Japan, these novels bring history to life through:
- Sydney's bubonic plague outbreak and the fight to save a city on the brink
- the home front during the Great War
- the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the vision behind it
- waterside workers struggling to survive during the Great Depression
- the Cowra Breakout and the fatal consequences of complacency
- forbidden relationships between Australian women and Italian prisoners of war
- nurses enduring hardship under Japanese internment
- moral dilemmas and shattered lives in occupied Japan after the war
An Attractive Naivety is an epic work of Australian historical fiction spanning the first half of the twentieth century. Through the lives of ordinary men and women, it traces the nation’s journey from Federation and plague to Depression, war, and uneasy peace. Interweaving fictional characters with real events, the novel explores the humour, hardship, courage and contradictions that shaped modern Australia.
Set against the remote Pacific island of Morotai and the ruins of postwar Japan at war’s end, Ashes and Sakura follows Tom Darcy, a young Australian soldier serving with the British Commonwealth occupation forces in Japan after the Second World War. As he encounters the devastation of a defeated nation and forms unexpected bonds with those on the other side of the conflict, the novel explores war, memory, love and reconciliation.