Vintage International A Town Like Alice, (Paperback)

"A Town Like Alice" is narrated by Noel (an older guy who is an attorney dealing with the heroine). Jean, the heroine, is in Malaya during WWII when unfortunate circumstances lead to her being captured, along with many other women, children, and men, by the Japanese. They send the men to prison camps, but not knowing what to do with the women and children, they tell them ... to march to the next town. They do this, and then -- no one knows what to do with them there. This continues and continues, with about half of the group dying, until finally after months a town agrees to let the remaining group stay until war's end and work in the rice paddies (all this, incidentally, is based on history, although it happened in Sumatra rather than Malaya). Jean meets Joe Harman, a hunky Australian guy. Romance ensues, and a bunch of other stuff, but eventually they end up married in Australia, with Jean putting modern-day female try-hards to shame with her spunk: she begins a business, an ice cream shop, and a pool in the isolated town -- and late in the book, from her hospital bed where she just gave birth, she goes on with plans for a grocery store. This lady has got it goin' on! Joe kind of cracked me up -- he said "oh my word" about twice each page (is that an Australian thing?), and I also got my fill of "bonza" and "crook" as an adjective. Good story overall, although I far preferred the first part to the last.