Two men, sworn enemies, come face to face on the battlefields of France.
When Jack Kelly, a captain in the Australian army, shows compassion towards his prisoner Paul Mann, a brave and high-ranking German officer, an unexpected bond is formed. But neither could imagine how their pasts and futures would become inextricably linked by one place: Papua.
The Great War is finally over and both soldiers return to their once familiar lives, only to find that in their absences events have changed their respective worlds forever. In Australia, Jack is suddenly alone with a son he does not know and a future filled with uncertainty, while the photograph of a beautiful German woman he has never met fills his thoughts. Meanwhile the Germany that Paul had fought for is vanishing under the influence of an ambitious young man named Adolph Hitler, and he fears for the future of his family.
A new beginning beckons them both in a beautiful but dangerous land where rivers of gold are as legendary as the fearless, cannibalistic tribes, and where fortunes can be made and lost as quickly as a life. Papua. Peter has been a soldier, articled clerk to a solicitor, prawn trawler deckhand, builder's labourer, pipe layer, real estate salesman, private investigator, police sergeant and adviser to the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary. He has lived and worked with Aboriginal people, Pacific Islander people, Vietnamese and Papuans and speaks, reads and writes Vietnamese and Pidgin. He now lives at Maclean, on the Clarence River in northern New South Wales. He is a volunteer firefighter with the Rural Fire service, and is interested in fishing and the vast opens spaces of outback Queensland.
