Morris, Heather: Sisters under the Rising Sun

1942. Singapore is falling to the Japanese army. English musician Norah Chambers places her eight-year-old daughter Sally on a ship leaving Singapore, desperate to keep her safe. As the island burns, Australian nurse Nesta James joins the terrified cargo of people, including the heartbroken Norah, crammed aboard HMS Vyner Brooke . After only two days at sea, the ship is bombarded and sunk. Nesta and Norah reach the beaches of Indonesia, only to be captured and held in one of the notorious Japanese POW camps, places of starvation and brutality. But even here joy can be found, in music, where Norah's 'voice orchestra' transports the internees from squalor into light. Sisters in arms, Norah and Nesta devote themselves to the women's survival while discovering their own extraordinary reserves of courage, love and strength. Sisters under the Rising Sun is a story of women in war: of sisterhood, bravery and friendship in the darkest of circumstances, from the multimillion-copy bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilka's Journey and Three Sisters. 'I read it with my heart in my mouth. What a story. I finished it weeping.' Elizabeth Buchan, author of Two Women of Rome