Reading Level: Young Adult

Publisher Arthur A. Levine shines as an importer of foreign titles for young readers, like Harry Potter, to the US market. The Divine Wind is an Australian book set in the period just before and during World War II.

This is not a book filled with action. I don't expect it will be a wildly popular book. But it is a good book.  It is a reflective tale of love, inaction, and betrayal. Garry Disher's novel is reminiscent of such works as John Knowles' A Separate Peace or John Hersey's A Single Pebble or A Bell for Adano.   Its narrative voice is mostly passive in nature, but it is a voice befitting the story's protagonist, Hart Penrose. Hart is a native of Australia's provincial north territory. He is in love with an Australian-born girl of Japanese decent. His love becomes complicated by the politics of the time and the arrival of the son of a government official from the south.

Throughout the book, Hart is a bystander—even in those parts of his life where he should be active and decisive. He is a fly caught in an intricate web of relationships involving three families: the family of the girl, the family of his friend and rival, and his own father, dead mother, and sister. Ultimately, The Divine Wind is about taking stock of one�s life.  Its ending is both sad and hopeful.

CAUTION: This coming of age tale does contain sexual subject matter that is both tasteful and vital to the story.

— KB Shaw, Publisher-SPECTRUM
Member SCBWI