Making Shadows

Making Shadows spans the period from the fall of Singapore in World War 2 to the Welcome Home Parade for Vietnam veterans in 1987. It is a story about what appear to be opposites - life and death, light and shadow, war and peace - when, in fact, they are the same.



Joe is a National Service conscript. Assigned to his four-man tent at Nui Dat base, he is scrutinised by three regulars of the 1st Australian Task Force in Vietnam. Once they learn he has a degree in psychology, he is nicknamed Shrink.



The story follows the diggers through their time in Vietnam, and their subsequent personal battles in the aftermath of the war - PTSD, drug use and organised crime, murder and revenge, heartache and good fortune.



As the story proceeds, we learn about Frank, Joe's father, and his time as a Japanese POW. We follow Joe's adopted First Nations sister, Dot, as she weaves her way through the family's post-war traumas and achievements, as well as her own path through racial prejudice to professional and personal fulfilment. What she and Joe don't know is that they share the same biological father, a secret withheld by Frank and their grandmother Winn.