IN FALLING SNOW

A vivid and compelling story of love, war and secrets, set against the backdrop of WWI France.

Iris is an 80-year-old widow living quietly in Brisbane, seeing her great-grandchildren most days and worrying about her granddaughter Grace, a headstrong young obstetrician. Grace, like many granddaughters, has never really thought much about Iris's life before she got old. One day an invitation comes for Iris through the post - she has been invited to a reunion in France, where she served in a hospital during WWI. Iris, determined to go, is overcome by the memories of the past, when she, a shy, naïve young woman, travelled across the war-torn French countryside to bring home her younger brother, Tom, who enlisted when he was only fifteen years old. On her way to find Tom, Iris comes across the charismatic and engaging Miss Ivens, who is intent on setting up a field hospital run entirely by women in a disused convent at Royaumont in France, and co-opts Iris to help her. Putting her fears for Tom aside, Iris decides to stay at Royaumont, and it is there that she truly comes of age, finding her capability and her strength, discovering her passion for medicine, making friends with the vivacious Violet and falling in love. But the war is a brutal, terrifying thing, and when the ultimate tragedy happens, there is a terrible price that Iris has to pay, a price that will have consequences which will echo down the generations. An unforgettable, tremendously moving and ultimately uplifting novel about mothering, war and sacrifice - and above all, the small, unsung acts of heroism that love makes us capable of. Brisbane-based author Mary-Rose MacColl has a degree in journalism from the Queensland University of Technology and was the University of Queensland's first graduate in the Master of Arts in Creative Writing. MacColl worked as a cadet journalist and an assistant nurse before moving into higher education as an administrator and corporate writer. She has published three novels: No Safe Place (1996), which was runner-up in the 1995 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award, Angels in the Architecture (1999), and Killing Superman (2003). She has taught creative writing, feature journalism and publishing, and chaired the 1998 Brisbane Writers' Festival.