From an award-winning Australian novelist comes a wonderfully inspiring story about the ill-fated love affair between a white female jazz saxophonist and a black American GI, set against the backdrop of 1940s Sydney.From an award-winning novelist comes a wonderfully inspiring story about the ill-fated love affair between a white female jazz saxophonist and a black American GI, set against the backdrop of 1940s Sydney. Sydney, 1942. Pearl is eighteen, beautiful, and impetuous. She plays saxophone in an all-girl jazz band at the Trocadero and occasionally sits in on underground gigs with her twin brother, Martin, who also plays the sax. One evening, black GI and jazz legend James Washington blows into her life, and love begins to unfold against the blacked-out nights and rumor-filled days of a city in the grip of war. When James is shipped out to fight in New Guinea, Pearl hatches a breathtaking plan to reunite with him. And then all hell breaks loose. Internationally acclaimed author Mandy Sayer writes with astonishing insight and tenderness in this audaciously original novel—a romance with a haunting jazz soundtrack and a war story like no other.