Hong Kong December 1941: South East Asia is quickly capitulating before the invading troops of the Rising Sun. The fall of Singapore to the Japanese has been chronicled many times in many ways, but less has been written about the battle and fall of Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941 which Joy explores in this fact-based story.
"The Japanese won't wait much longer to attack. Can't you understand that we're living on borrowed time?" Prophetic words from Australian professional soldier, John Drayton Whitby, to his English doctor wife, Lexine, in the opening pages of this tale. Hong Kong is about to yield to the Japanese when Lexine is influenced to sail away from the island with her baby son and Eurasian close friend, Kathleen Leigh, a woman brought up to believe a lie. When the ship is torpedoed by the enemy and her son is lost at sea, Lexine finds herself shipwrecked in the Phillipines which is soon to be ground under the heel of the Japanese. Kathleen is taken prisoner by the invaders and Lexine, in attempting to escape, falls in with a group of American soldiers fighting with the Filipinos to hold the Phillipines against the enemy. To her amazement one of them is her husband's friend - American Hank 'Trap' Trapperton, a West Point graduate and the real father of her lost child - a man who detests himself for his feelings towards Lexine.
Finally as the war advances John Drayton and 'Trap' are thrown together and must fight side-by-side.
As the story develops fine portraits of American Generals, Douglas MacArthur and Jonathan Wainwright are drawn, documenting MacArthur's escape from the Philippines to safety in Australia and revealing the plight of Wainwright left to face, and be captured by, the Japanese. This novel gives a true and gripping historical perspective to the times and the war against the Japanese in the South Pacific.