Sunset Ridge by Nicole Alexander

I purchased this book on a bit of a whim from The Warehouse.  I am a bit of a browser in the book section most times I enter The Warehouse, just like at Whitcoulls or Paper Plus or my other favourite book stores Pennys (Chartwell Square) and Wright's Bookstore in Cambridge and that fantastic bookstore in Matamata that truly only has books!

 

I think what attracted me to this book, Sunset Ridge, was the cover, soldiers silhouetted in an obvious World War I setting.  I have to confess to being a bit of a historical novel junkie, and when you throw a World War in I'm generally hooked.

 

So here is the cover and back of the book blurb:

 



I haven't read this author before, but apparently Nicole Alexander is a best selling author in Australia and had a book called The Bark Cutters shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Award in 2011, and yep, she is an Australian.  To find out more about Nicole Alexander and her books, click here.

It took a little bit for me to get into this book.  It starts out in 2000 in the Queensland outback on the road.  The introductory character, Madeleine, is rather prickly and not initially an easy character to connect with. 

Then, before you know it, you are flicked back into France, behind the Western Front, 1916.  You get introduced to a whole lot of new characters. 

Then you're in the Queensland outback in 1916 meeting more characters, Madeleine's forebears.  The novel flicks back between these settings and times throughout.  It gradually fleshes out the characters and their relationships and backstories and why they are who they are.  It also gradually puts together how an outback family and a French family have connections.

While it took me a good 200 or so pages to connect with this 472 page novel, I did eventually get invested in the characters and their story.  It also reaffirmed to me what a terrible war WWI was in terms of what mankind can do to each other, how the first industrial mechanical war could cause such havoc and have an effect long after it ended to the land and the people.  It also was interesting to see a side to the war that we don't often reflect on, how those with German ancestry in Australia (and most likely in New Zealand too), no matter how tenuous, were treated during that time.