ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Usually when I post a Sensational Snippet, it’s because the author’s prose is exquisite and I think an excerpt deserves a little place in the sun.  But not this time.  This prose is rather ordinary.  No… this time my excerpt is – or ought to be – sensational because it draws attention to a shocking injustice…

Poking deeper into the old trunk, Margaret carefully lifted out a bundle of letters she’d written home to her mother and then caught her breath as she found underneath the diary she’d also written two decades before during her service year in South-east Asia.

She turned to her husband, Bob, with tears in her eyes.  Denied recognition of her service for more than twenty years because the Department of Defence would not acknowledge the service of RAAF nurses in Vietnam, here was documented proof of what she and many of her compatriots had actually done in the Vietnam War.

Our Vietnam Nurses, by Annabelle Brayley, page 41, underlining is mine. Scheduled for publication 2/5/16 by Michael Joseph, an Imprint of Penguin Books, ISBN: 9780143797029

Words fail me.

Pre-order from Fishpond: Our Vietnam Nurses or any good bookstore.