A First World War novel of love, peace, violence and Antarctica

Adelaide, 1916, and Dora Somerville grieves for her brother, Edgar, killed in France. In the course of an oppressively hot summer, she decides to abandon her pacifist beliefs and embrace violence as a means to end the Great War.

In his printing shop, her lover, Daniel Bone, also makes a momentous decision. He can no longer face the constant pressure to fight in the war – he will join an Antarctic expedition and abandon Australia, leaving Dora behind. However, the peace Daniel seeks eludes him when he is caught up in a crisis in the icy wilderness as the men find themselves under attack.

When the lovers parted, they had agreed to write to one another, although they knew the letters would never be sent. Thousands of miles apart, their passion grows as the decisions they have made imperil them both.

"A rich full circle of a novel. In places as raw and brutal as the bomb central to the plot, and in others woven as delicately as lace. A new perspective on Australia’s Great War, and I loved it." - Deborah Challinor

"In the letters of these lovers, as in Susan Errington’s delicate crafting of their stories, there’s a beautiful celebration of what Errington herself describes as “writing as an essential act of surviving in the wilderness”. - Ashley Hay

About the Author
Susan Errington's first novel, Olive Street, was short-listed for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for First Fiction. Olive Street has also been published in the Netherlands as Nacht in Olive Street. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Smashed and Penguin Summer Short Stories 2, as well as in literary magazines. She has been a co-editor of a short story collection and her short fiction has been awarded and shortlisted for several literary prizes. She was a founding member, contributor and non-fiction editor for the literary magazine Wet Ink. Ice Letters is her second novel. She is currently a board member of the South Australian Writers Centre,