The Antipodeans - Greg McGee

2014: Clare and her father travel to Venice from New Zealand. She is fleeing a broken marriage; he is in failing health and wants to return one last time to the place where, as a young man, he spent happy years as a rugby player and coach. While exploring the city, Clare discovers there is more to her father's motives for returning than she realised, and time may be running out for him to put old demons to rest.

1942: Joe and Harry, two Kiwi POWs in Italy, manage to escape their captors, largely due to the help of a sympathetic Italian family show shelter them on their farm. Soon they are fighting alongside the partisans in the mountains, but both men have formed a bond with Donatella, the daughter of the family – a bond that will have dramatic repercussions decades later.

The Antipodeans is a novel of epic proportions in which families from opposite ends of the earth discover a legacy of love, blood and betrayal.

Upstart Press, 2015. Trade paperback. 352 pages. 

Condition: secondhand paperback in very good condition.