True North

Story Arc - In 1962, Australian Army adviser Lieutenant Jack Burns is deployed as part of 'The Team' to the Mekong Delta, the hotspot of the Vietnam War, where he is about to undergo the ultimate test of his conviction. As Jack is honing his craft in the Delta, Tran, a teenage soldier girl with the North Vietnamese Army makes her way down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and into the Delta, where she must stare down the might of US firepower at the Battle of Ap Bac. In a war without frontlines, Jack and Tran must fight to survive in the most dangerous place in the world...South Vietnam.

True North HALO drops the reader into the contested paddy fields and the viscous military swamp that was Vietnam divided between the corrupt Diem regime in the South and a ruthless communist-cum-nationalist fanaticism in the North - with Big Brother American raging like some crippled giant, an Ozymandias of the Mekong Delta. More than that, the readers sees the conflict through the vulnerable eyes of an Australian adviser to the South, and a fighter from the North who just happens to be a beautiful young women. The reader travels with the two protagonists, Jack and Tran, separately and together through some of the most harrowing events of the first years of the war.

Vietnam itself is evoked with an authority that is certain to engage the reader, and the battle scenes are so powerful that images remain long after the reader has returned the book to its place among the most memorable in the reader's collection. The ending is resolved with sophistication and subtlety and in a manner that is not only courageous it is beautifully symbolic at both the historical and personal levels of the narrative.

Book Features:

• Utterly gripping page turner war story from the early Adviser period of the Vietnam War in 1962/3 - a contentious and complex phase of the war that few novelists have tackled.
• HALO drops the reader into the paddies at the Battle of Ap Bac in 1963; True North is told from both sides and the reader sees the conflict through the vulnerable and heroic eyes of an Australian adviser to the South, and a fighter from the North who just happens to be a beautiful young women.
• True North is meticulously researched by Roger Rooney (Senior Researcher, Australian Government). It has its share of terror, love and suffering; with visceral combat scenes and characters that will stay with you long after you have returned it to the shelf.
• 2Why there will be consumer demand - core markets 1) 18 to 55 year old males who read military non-fiction 2) Vietnam Veterans (50,000 veterans) and Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans (50,000) and those that currently in the armed services and who live with PTSD. 3) Those who are now aged 65-80 years who were in their 20s and 30s during the 60s and want to re-live that period of their youth 4) Women who identify with strong female characters (Tran the NVA soldier)