Arthur and Helen marry at the dawn of World War I and are parted almost immediately when Arthur leaves for Egypt with the 10th Light Horse. He returns a sullen stranger, whose silence and anger tear the family asunder. Years later, in another war, Arthur and Helen’s son Tom is captured by the Japanese in Sumatra and put to work on the infamous Pekanbaru railway.
Only Birds Above powerfully portrays these historical events. However, the heart of the novel lies in human relationships on the battlefield and on the homefront and, most poignantly, in relationships between the men of the 10th Light Horse and the horses that were their comrades in war.
Portland Jones achieves the remarkable feat of telling an often brutal story in exquisite prose — one of the many qualities that make this novel infinitely more than a narrative of war. Only Birds Above establishes Jones as one of Western Australia’s finest writers of literary-historical fiction.