Sisters Under the Rising Sun – Heather Morris

Published By: Zaffre
Pages: 400
Released On: 28/09/2023

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 the 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. The friendships they build with the dozens of other women in the camps will give them the hope, strength and camaraderie they need in order to stay alive.

*****

Thanks to NetGalley and Zaffre for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.

I adore Heather’s previous novels: The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilka’s Journey, and Three Sisters (otherwise known as the Auschwitz trilogy), plus her non-fiction book Stories of Hope. I think she is such a fabulous storyteller and so sensitive and warming.

This is slightly different to the Auschwitz trilogy. It is still set in the war, and it is still about families and strangers in dangerous times, trying to survive, but it’s not set in the familiar surroundings of Auschwitz. We’ve travelled to the East to see how the war affected them, and I was really excited to see how Heather told their story.

It has a completely different tone to the Auschwitz series. It’s hard to explain. Obviously it’s still about the war and the horrors and torture and starvation etc. But the Auschwitz stories felt more…I don’t want to say relatable because of course it isn’t, but maybe more familiar, we all have some knowledge of what happened in those camps. Whereas this one was so shocking to me that I felt it was more heart twisting and heart-breaking because it was so raw and violent.

It is as full on and brutal as I’ve come to expect from her books. There’s no dilly-dallying, it goes straight into the action and we’re immediately bombarded with fear and injury and panic, and it really is very moving. It holds onto your heart strings from the off and doesn’t let you go throughout.

What Heather has managed to do here, similarly to her previous books, is to find the joy and hope amongst the horror. No-one can say these people didn’t endure some of the most horrific of circumstances at the hand of the enemy, whether it be in Auschwitz or otherwise, and it might have been incredibly difficult to find any sort of hope amongst their situation. But she’s found it. And it’s obvious that this is what helped the prisoners get through day to day. To hope it was one day closer to freedom. It also shows the importance of music. Music can heal so many mental and emotional ills, but we tend to take it for granted, some sort of hobby rather than something vital to our survival.

What I love about Heather’ books is, not only are they good reading, they are informative. I knew nothing about the goings on in the East before I read this. These are things not taught at schools, and even if we’re rapidly galloping towards a century since WW2, it’s vital we remember all the atrocities and all the victims. The sheer amount of research she would have had to do in this book, on the punishments, the Prisoner of War camps, the nurses, the names, the history…everything is based on truth, and to find a way to include it all without it feeling bogged down is genius. Sadly I’m sure there are thousands of stories like this one, but I’m sure coping that Heather will continue to tell them.

Unsurprisingly, for such a moving book, I found myself reading it through tears. It is so sensitively written, it’s like Heather knows and loves and cares for these characters as if they were her kin. I cried out of sadness, out of anger, and out of joy, because there are rays of sunshine, you just have to look for it.

Again, I love that Heather has added the true biographies of some of these women at the end of the book. It really brings them to life and reminds us that, whilst this may be a piece of fictional entertainment, these women were very real and they went through very real atrocities, and I think it’s a beautiful touch that Heather has given thanks to each and every one of them.