The Facing Island

This imaginative memoir uses letters sent by a young New Zealand soldier to the author's maternal grandmother during World War I as a springboard for her account of her own life. As the author 'replies to' the letters of the long-dead young soldier, links and parallels begin to emerge between the young man living with the fear of death and the woman, eighty years later, facing her own death from cancer in middle age. The author's story is courageous and moving; the young man's letters offer a vivid insight into an ordinary soldier's wartime experience. Jan Bassett died soon after completing her manuscript.