Join us for an evening with Heather Morris, the bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, as she talks about her new book Sisters Under the Rising Sun, a powerful novel of courage and resilience set in a World War II Japanese prisoner of war camp.
In the midst of WWII, an English musician, Norah Chambers, places her eight-year-old daughter Sally on a ship leaving Singapore, desperate to keep her safe from the Japanese army as they move down through the Pacific. Norah remains to care for her husband and elderly parents, knowing she may never see her child again.
Sister Nesta James, a Welsh Australian nurse, has enlisted to tend to Allied troops. But as Singapore falls to the Japanese she joins the terrified cargo of people, including the heartbroken Norah, crammed aboard the Vyner Brooke merchant ship. Only two days later, they are bombarded from the air off the coast of Indonesia, and in a matter of hours, the Vyner Brooke lies broken on the seabed.
After surviving a brutal 24 hours in the sea, Nesta and Norah reach the beaches of a remote island, only to be captured by the Japanese and held in one of their notorious POW camps. The camps are places of starvation and brutality, where disease runs rampant. Sisters in arms, Norah and Nesta fight side by side every day, helping whoever they can, and discovering in themselves and each other extraordinary reserves of courage, resourcefulness and determination.
Heather Morris has had an inpirational writing journey. Having met by chance a “man who just might have a story to tell”, she novelised the real life tattooist of Auschwitz, Lale Sokolov’s story into The Tattooist of Auschwitz which has sold over 16 million copies around the world and is now the sugbject of a major TV adaptation. She has travelled widely, speaking to people who have emotional stories to tell. She is particularly interested in the untold stories and acts of heroism of women in war which inspired her novel Cilka’s Journey set between Aushwitz and the gulags of Russia and now her new novel Sisters of the Rising Sun.
We look forward to welcoming Heather to Oswestry!
Tickets: £10 without book (Admits One, ticket redeemable against a signed copy of Sisters Under the Rising Sun) or £20 with book (Admits One, includes a signed copy of Sisters Under the Rising Sun)