Sharon Evans, Big Sky Publishing – Marketing & Communications, www.bigskypublishing.com.au
Allison Marlow Paterson’s new book Anzac Sons, The Story of Five Brothers in the War to End all Wars (Big Sky Publishing, RRP $34.99) provides a heartbreaking account told through over 500 letters, of six brothers, five who fought in WW1, four of whom served in the same company of the 38th battalion. A unique first hand perspective of life on the battlefield and the lives of the family and communities left behind.
Anzac Sons reads like a movie script, six brothers, five go to war, four in the same battalion, one at home to look after farm and family. Tragedy and loss, stoicism on the battlefield and at home, a mothers heartache, and a young girl who decades later rescues the letters of her great uncles and grandfather from the aging old family home and sets out to tell her family’s story. In doing so captures the essence of a nation faced with shocking carnage on a scale never before encountered.
Written by Australian author Allison Marlow Paterson this is the story of her grandfather and his five brothers, over 500 letters they wrote home from the trenches in World War 1 create the foundation of this Victorian family’s story. Allison wrote Anzac Sons for her great-grandmother – Sarah Marlow – often mentioned in the boy’s letters, a mother far from her much loved sons, and who it is said died of a broken heart.
This book is not just a family’s story of loss and ‘pushing through’ adversity but also of a time when family and communities where swept with sadness from the loss of so many of their young men and the very real issue of how would they ‘get on’ without them.
Gallipoli may have been where Australian soldiers began their campaign but the Western Front where the long hard push began, battles where thousands of men would die, and the Anzacs soldiers whose bravery, humour and skill was honed under horrific conditions.
Anzac Sons is an engaging, page-turner of a book and the story of how Allison came to right this book is equally fascinating. Written initially to honour her great-grandmother, who died of a ‘broken heart’, it has become so much more. While Anzac Sons is a family history it is also a story of a community with national significance. It is told in the words of the young men and narrated by a family member with the insight and emotion which that brings.
www.bigskypublishing.com.au
