Two women, two wars, one family. As Kate Hardy goes into labor on Anzac Day, 1946, her father Sam relives the love story that resulted in Kate — a wartime romance with a nurse named Rose that began at Gallipoli and ended with a deception that changed everything.
On Anzac Day, 1946, Sam Hardy arrives at his daughter Kate's farm in Pahiatua just as she's about to give birth. As Kate's husband, war hero Harry Wilhelm, paces and panics through the toughest hours of his life, Sam attempts to distract him with the story of Kate's mother.
Thirty-one years earlier, on the very first Anzac Day, a young Sam Hardy swam ammunition horses ashore under fire at Gallipoli. Wounded and shipped to a hospital tent on the Greek Island of Lemnos, he met Rose, a volunteer nurse, and fell in love in the space of an afternoon. Their romance would carry them from a chance reunion in Alexandria to a wartime elopement in London, through malaria and mud in Palestine, and finally to a devastating discovery that would shape Kate's life before she ever drew breath.
Now, as Harry waits to meet his own child, Sam finds himself reliving the best and worst days of his life — and discovering, once again, what the war gave him, while it took so much.
A tender, bittersweet dual-timeline story bridging WWI and WWII, What the War Gave brings together the beloved characters of On Kapiti Coast, A Very Important Person, and After Tarawa with the untold story of where it all began.
Contains graphic detail of the Gallipoli landing and of childbirth.
Genre: Historical
On Anzac Day, 1946, Sam Hardy arrives at his daughter Kate's farm in Pahiatua just as she's about to give birth. As Kate's husband, war hero Harry Wilhelm, paces and panics through the toughest hours of his life, Sam attempts to distract him with the story of Kate's mother.
Thirty-one years earlier, on the very first Anzac Day, a young Sam Hardy swam ammunition horses ashore under fire at Gallipoli. Wounded and shipped to a hospital tent on the Greek Island of Lemnos, he met Rose, a volunteer nurse, and fell in love in the space of an afternoon. Their romance would carry them from a chance reunion in Alexandria to a wartime elopement in London, through malaria and mud in Palestine, and finally to a devastating discovery that would shape Kate's life before she ever drew breath.
Now, as Harry waits to meet his own child, Sam finds himself reliving the best and worst days of his life — and discovering, once again, what the war gave him, while it took so much.
A tender, bittersweet dual-timeline story bridging WWI and WWII, What the War Gave brings together the beloved characters of On Kapiti Coast, A Very Important Person, and After Tarawa with the untold story of where it all began.
Contains graphic detail of the Gallipoli landing and of childbirth.
Genre: Historical
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