Publisher's Synopsis
1942. English musician Norah Chambers places her eight-year-old daughter Sally on a ship leaving Singapore, desperate to keep her safe in the face of the Japanese invasion. As the island falls, Australian Army Nurse Sister Nesta James joins the terrified cargo of people, including the heartbroken Norah, crammed aboard HMS VYNER BROOKE. Only two days later, they are bombarded from the air off the coast of Indonesia, and in a matter of hours, the ship has sunk. After surviving the sea, Nesta and Norah reach the beach of a remote island, only to be captured and held in a series of Japanese POW camps: places of starvation and brutality, where disease runs rampant. Sisters in arms, Norah and Nesta devote themselves to the prisoners' survival while discovering their own extraordinary reserves of courage, love and strength.
