On Gallant Wings by Helen Edwards

Title: On Gallant Wings

Author: Helen Edwards

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Riveted Press

Published: 2^nd April 2025

Format: Paperback

Pages: 288

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: Thirteen-year-old Ava lives in Darwin with her family and their homing pigeons, of which Essie is Ava’s favourite. A Japanese family live next door and their son, Kazuo, is Ava’s best and only real friend. Her father is serving overseas.

While Essie is taking her first flight, Ava overhears an argument between her mother, and her brother Fred, who has lied about his age to join the militia. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he trains in Darwin and later helps set up a pigeon service in Townsville. When most civilians are sent to safety down south, Ava remains in Darwin because her mother (who works in the post office) is essential to the war effort.

Later that day, military police take Kazuo and his family away in a truck to a holding camp—much to Ava’s distress—along with many other Japanese people who call Australia home.

On February 19, 1942, Darwin is bombed, and Ava and her mother are evacuated in a cattle train with the remaining women and children. After a very difficult journey, they arrive, exhausted, at her grandparent’s home in Lake Boga, where they discover the extent of the damage to Darwin is being concealed from the population. Even those who were actually there know only part of the truth.

Desperate to do something to contribute to the war effort, Ava’s mother joins the WAAAF and begins work at the secret Catalina Flying Boat Base.

In the meantime, the authorities decide to transfer Kazuo to the men’s camp, separating him from his parents and siblings.

Living by rules and rituals has always been how Ava has felt safe, but when Kazuo escapes, she is faced with the hardest decision of all—whether to report a ‘potentially dangerous’ escapee to the authorities, or to protect a beloved friend …

~*~

World War Two has been going on for two years when Ava’s story starts in Darwin, not long before Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese in 1941. After her brother signs up and heads off to join the militia, Ava’s experience of the war changes. Pearl Harbor is bombed and her best friend, Kazuo and his family are taken off to an internment camp, and everyone starts evacuating to the south. Yet Ava and her mother, who works in the post office remain until Darwin is bombed in February – an aspect of the war that I have seen mentioned and explored in a few middle grade novels over the years, but rarely in adult novels, which often focus on the European theatre of the war. At least, in the ones I have read and been able to get to. Ava and her mother are lucky – they’re among the survivors evacuated, though the scars will forever be with them. They head to Lake Boga, to stay with her grandparents. To get by, Ava lives by sets of rules, and decides to keep doing this in Lake Boga.

Yet, as she makes new friends, and keeps in contact with Kazuo and her brother, Ava finds that she has to break the rules, especially when Kazuo escapes – then she needs to trust her new friends to help him. Everything in this book captures the uncertainties and fears of war, and what it must have been like as a teenager going through it all, not knowing whether your family was safe. Not knowing when it would end. Knowing that what happened to you, what really happened was kept secret from the rest of the country, and what that means is that often when reading about Australia and the war.

Books like this not only expand our knowledge, but they can teach us something new, if it is something we don’t know a lot about. They show the human perspective and experiences beyond the facts, and how the trauma of the day affected Ava, what it meant for her as she navigated a new life and a life with a base near where she lived. It’s an important book because it also teaches us more about the use of carrier pigeons in the war, and the significant role they played in getting messages to troops.

Ava’s experiences of the war felt raw and heightened, and evoked a real sense of fear and uncertainty during the book. The war was constantly on Ava’s mind, and this was shown through her letters that were censored, and filled with reminders of what the war was like. We get a glimpse of what Australia’s experience with the war was like in this book, and how it impacted a family and their small community as everyone coped with trauma of some kind. I was very eager to read this book, having read Helen’s previous books, The Rebels of Mount Buffalo and Legend of the Lighthouse Moon, and it didn’t let me down at all. Everything I hoped for this book was there, and everything about it was dealt with sensitively and in a way that middle grade to early young adult readers can understand. It is a great book for older readers too, because it deals with the events of the bombing of Darwin in a very human way.

This is what makes books that have war and historical events work so well for me. They have the facts, but they also have the human connection we need. That makes historical events real, or at least, humanise them beyond the stark facts of how many people died or where something happened. It makes history come to life. And Ava is such a wonderful character, who shows us how children were affected by war, by what they heard and saw. These are stories that need to be heard, and middle grade and young adult fiction does an excellent job of this.

I think On Gallant Wings is an exceptional book about the war and how different people responded to what was going on, and their responses once they got home. It didn’t shy away from showing racism and discrimination, and it also allowed the characters to talk about it. To say that they felt it was wrong, and to do what they could to remain fair and understanding. It is a great book to add to our knowledge of the war in Australia, and particularly about how it impacted children and families. Helen has done an excellent job of bringing it all together with delicacy, sensitivity and a profound understanding grounded in research to bring this to life.