'There is nothing more important than love and refuge.
Egypt, 1941. Only hours after disembarking in Alexandria, William Marsh, an Australian corporal at twenty-one, is face down in the sand, caught in a stoush with the Italian enemy. He is saved by James Kelly, a childhood friend from Sydney and the last person he expected to see. But where William escapes unharmed, not all are so fortunate.
William is sent to supervise an army depot in the Western Desert, with a private directive to find an AWOL soldier: James Kelly. When the two are reunited, James is recovering from an accident, hidden away in the home of an unusual family - a family with secrets. Together they will risk it all to find answers.
Soon William and James are thrust headlong into territory more dangerous than either could have imagined.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Epigraph:
Australia's sons are noble,
They're noble and they're true;
Their hearts are stout and fearless,
And pure as morning dew.
And for freedom, home and kindred
And Australia ever dear,
The faced the fiercest foeman
With hearts that knew no fear.
-Gumsucker, 'The Charge Australians Made'
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery
-Wilfred Owen, 'Strange Meeting'
'This article examines how two works of fiction depict male same-sex desire in Australian military history. The protagonists in the novel Bodies of Men and the short story collection The Boys of Bullaroo do not identify as gay or bisexual, yet they develop intensely intimate friendships that become sexual. The texts come from different literary and popular genres, but they both represent what Elizabeth Woledge refers to as intimatopias: ‘a homosocial world in which the social closeness of the male characters engenders intimacy.’ Intimatopic fictions of war are queer texts that challenge binary and normative understandings of sexuality because the characters’ sexual identities are not defined by (homo)sexual acts. Bodies of Men and The Boys of Bullaroo are intentionally ambiguous about the protagonists’ sexualities, which are neither fixed nor fluid, but rather expressed as demisexual extensions of intimacy. The texts also challenge Australia’s digger and Anzac mythologies by presenting soldiers as sensitive, vulnerable and non-heterosexual. As such, intimatopic fictions of war reimagine Australian military history and offer new, queer conceptualizations of same-sex intimacy, mateship and desire.' (Publication abstract)
'This article examines how two works of fiction depict male same-sex desire in Australian military history. The protagonists in the novel Bodies of Men and the short story collection The Boys of Bullaroo do not identify as gay or bisexual, yet they develop intensely intimate friendships that become sexual. The texts come from different literary and popular genres, but they both represent what Elizabeth Woledge refers to as intimatopias: ‘a homosocial world in which the social closeness of the male characters engenders intimacy.’ Intimatopic fictions of war are queer texts that challenge binary and normative understandings of sexuality because the characters’ sexual identities are not defined by (homo)sexual acts. Bodies of Men and The Boys of Bullaroo are intentionally ambiguous about the protagonists’ sexualities, which are neither fixed nor fluid, but rather expressed as demisexual extensions of intimacy. The texts also challenge Australia’s digger and Anzac mythologies by presenting soldiers as sensitive, vulnerable and non-heterosexual. As such, intimatopic fictions of war reimagine Australian military history and offer new, queer conceptualizations of same-sex intimacy, mateship and desire.' (Publication abstract)
