The Battle of Messines Road

‘My war was a good war, as was the next one. Your father’s is a bad one. But in the end it makes no difference. It’s all war. It’s always the same.’
A man at the end of his life, trying to make sense of war, for a boy at the start of his. The story of how these unlikely friends find solace and together fight what they see as the unfairness of it all. A fight that culminates in a series of battles; one on Messines Road and one on Anzac Day.
Told both through the eyes of 10-year-old Zac, living in 1968 Wellington and a 21-year-old World War I soldier, a coming-of-age story, a World War I diary and a novel about friendship and families. It is a book of how two wars, 50 years apart, changed New Zealand and its people.
With the centenary of WWI now in progress a chance to get a fresh perspective on a period of New Zealand’s history which is presently in the spotlight. The combination of historical document, carefully researched history and fiction gives readers...