Songs of the Other Man

This is the story of a most musical boy called Jem, who becomes a most unlikely and ferocious soldier. He works farms in the rugged Wairarapa hills of New Zealand, near to the coast that is the graveyard of many ships; devoted to the sounds he elicits from his cherished flute; and imagining all the while that he will one day take the form of the albatross he believes himself to be; to soar over the wild Southern Ocean in the direction of mysterious Antarctica. But as the year 1939 comes to a close, a storm of a different kind looms ominously, and many young men depart for war. At first, Jem gathers the red agar seaweed that he delivers to the Maori, Mack Reedy, that will become the jelly in the cans of bully beef sent to the troops on far-off battlefields. He is entranced by Lily, who shares his love of music but who will devastate him by marrying a farmer. Then, Jem too is drawn into a world violent beyond any nightmare; fighting with the New Zealand Second Division the length of Italy. But when the war is ended, in Trieste, he is involved in the killing of a civilian, he is accused of murder. 

Jem Reedy is an uncomplicated boy who lives for music, but who is almost irredeemably altered by a war he barely understands. But it is music that will save him. 'Songs of the Other Man' is an authentic description of rural New Zealand before the Second World War; of the role of New Zealanders in the bloody Italian Campaign; and of the universal suffering experienced by soldiers long after the conflict is over.