Their Fathers' Land

Book excerpt: In Egypt, in Gallipoli and in France, they are many who sleep beneath a small wooden cross and each cross will testify to people over there that we from downunder knew how to fight for a noble idea. In this WW1 novel, published in English for the first time, Jim and Dick are two lively boys from the bush, along with 20,000 other Australians and New Zealanders, who embarked on what seemed to be a great adventure when they enlisted in the 1st AIF - to fight for 'King and Empire'. Their experience is cut short when both are seriously wounded on the Gallipoli peninsula. They find themselves in beds next to each other on a hospital ship headed for England. As they slowly recover, they discover the 'old country' of their ancestors. Unfortunately, they fall for the same young English nurse and a love triangle emerges to trouble their futures. French/Australian author Paul Wenz based his novel and short stories on personal experience as an immigrant grazier in central NSW and working for the Red Cross in France and London during World War I. The writing is simple, at times poetic and humorous, instinctively seductive, devoid of convention and banality. 'Wenz is a brilliant noticer - a talent one is born with... and without which no novelist can draw us into the world he is making.' - Helen Garner