A Week in September

A story of enduring love from the Burma Railway

Peter Rees, Sue Langford

$34.99 $12

Paperback

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English

HARPER360
07 July 2021

Autobiography: historical, political & military; True stories of heroism, endurance & survival; Military history; Prisoners of war; Bargains; Biography - Australian

Through a precious cache of WWII letters, a story of war is revealed.

But also, most movingly, a story of love, resilience and survival, from award-winning and bestselling writer, Peter Rees and Sue Langford..

'Profoundly moving ... I don't mind saying I wept at the end, for all the young men lost to war, their widows and children ... a lovely book.' The Australian

Doug Heywood was a teenager when he discovered, in a shoebox hidden in a wardrobe, hundreds of letters, all written by his father, Scott Heywood. As a POW on the infamous Burma Railway, Scott wrote almost daily to his young wife, Margery, on scraps of paper that had to be hidden from guards. These letters tell of an enduring love – and also, intriguingly, of how Scott dealt with the most brutally testing circumstances.

Scott's story has echoes of another story happening 7000 kilometres away at the same time. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist, was rounded up with his family and sent to Auschwitz in September 1942. Frankl later wrote in his classic book Man's Search for Meaning that the last of the human freedoms was the ability 'to choose one's attitude in any set of circumstances'. Scott Heywood and Viktor Frankl, on opposite sides of the world, found their own ways to survive that were uncannily similar.

This is the untold story of one man, one ordinary man, and his war. Woven through it is Margery's story, as she waited anxiously with their two young children in rural Victoria, trapped in an emotional rollercoaster, unaware that he was writing letters to her that could not be posted. This is a powerful and moving story of love, resilience and survival.

By: Peter Rees
With: Sue Langford
Imprint: HARPER360
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 155mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 446g
ISBN: 9781460759899
ISBN 10: 1460759893
Publication Date: 07 July 2021
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Peter Rees has had a long career in journalism, working as federal political correspondent for The West Australian and The Sunday Telegraph. He is the author of The Boy from Boree Creek: The Tim Fischer Story; Tim Fischer's Outback Heroes; Killing Juanita (winner of the 2004 Ned Kelly Award for true crime); The Other Anzacs (which inspired the ABC TV series Anzac Girls); Desert Boys; Lancaster Men; The Remarkable Life of Charles Bean (awarded the Nib Anzac Centenary Literary Prize for 2015 and the Fellowship of Australian Writers 2015 prize for non-fiction); and The Missing Man: The Powerful Story of Len Waters, Australia's First Aboriginal Fighter Pilot. Sue Langford has been a practising psychologist for more than thirty-five years, the past twenty of which have been in private practice. She has had extensive experience in clinical practice, with a broad range of people and problems. Her particular interests are in trauma management and relationship counselling. In addition, she has provided counselling services to members of the RAAF and the RAN as a consultant psychologist.