Welcome to my newsletter for October 2025 where I share news about my books, my latest blog posts, and upcoming events.
My latest book, Ashes and Sakura, is now available. This is a companion novel to An Attractive Naivety. You can buy it from Ed at the Woodend Bookshop (let's support our local booksellers!), if you live in the Macedon Ranges, or online at Booktopia and Amazon. See my website at Nihil Alienum for more information and a list of locations.
I would like to thank all of you who have posted ratings and reviews on my two books on Goodreads. That is much appreciated. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. If you haven't yet left a review and rating, I would encourage you to do so as it is helpful for promotion. It only takes a minute or so. See Goodreads for links to my two books.
Also please pencil in your diaries my author's talk at the Woodend Library on 6 December 2025 at 10.30 am. Dr Matthew Gisborne and I will give a short co-presentation on a couple of issues that everyday Australians faced in the aftermath of WWII. My two books will also be available to purchase at a discount price as ideal Christmas presents for your loved ones.
A huge thank you for your support,
David Gormley-O'Brien
Ashes and Sakura
My latest historical novel is now released - Ashes and Sakura.
Set in the ruins of postwar Japan and the wheatfields of country Australia, Ashes and Sakura is a powerful story of love, guilt, and redemption.
When Australian soldier Tom Davis joins the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Hiroshima Prefecture, he hopes to atone for what he saw in the Pacific War. Amid the rubble and uneasy calm of 1946 Japan, he meets Natsuko Iwasa, a young woman trying to rebuild her life. Their bond defies the rules of the occupation and the scars of war that divide them.
Back home in New South Wales, Tom’s sister Evelyn faces her own reckoning. Pregnant to Giovanni, an Italian prisoner of war once assigned to their family farm, she must stand against her father and the small-town morality of postwar Australia.
Blending historical truth with deeply human drama, Ashes and Sakura explores Australia’s search for identity, the lingering shadows of the Second World War, and the fragile hope of rebuilding love from ruin.
A companion to An Attractive Naivety, it continues the Becoming Australia series.
Latest Blog
My latest blog post is on Vivian Bullwinkel who appears in An Attractive Naivety. She was the sole survivor of the massacre of 21 nurses on Bangka Island in February 1942 and spent the following 3 years in Japanese internment camps in Sumatra.
In reading her diaries, notebooks, and her testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials in December 1946, I was struck by her extraordinary courage and leadership.
