AustLit

'Upon a remote Pacific island, deserted and bombed, a nun and a soldier, derelicts of the war, live an uneasy primitive life. Realising that there is little chance of rescue, this incongruous pair face up to the exigencies of their position; Allison, a man of little or no religious belief, gradually losing the awe with which he has been invested by Sister Angela's sacred habit and by the transcendent faith which for a time obscures her feminine desirability.

At first living is reasonably simple: but the landing of a Japanese garrison obliges them to take to fox-holes, from which emerging only at night they subsist on roots and fish. This powerful first novel tells a moving, realistic story with sympathy and insight and advances logically to a dramatic conclusion.' (Publisher's blurb on front cover).