"The Wing of Night." by Brenda Walker. [review - radio script]

Abstract

Brenda Walker’s new novel "The Wing of Night" is subtitled ‘a novel of love and war’. She is not concerned with the causes of war and the big picture, but with the shattering effects on individuals. The war, in this case, is World War One – the Great War, as it was known until, unthinkably, it was surpassed so soon afterwards. Two men from rural Western Australia leave on the same boat from Fremantle, with their horses, to fight with the Light Horsemen at Gallipoli. The women who stayed home to wait for them, one a wife, one a new lover, are neighbours and friends. Their lives mingle in unexpected ways over the coming years.