The Divine Wind

The Divine Wind is a 1998 work of historical fiction by young adult literature writer Garry Disher. It tracks the life of four young adults, Alice, Hartley, Mitsy, and Jamie, who grow up together in Broome, Australia in the years before World War II. Although their lives and heritages are starkly different from each other’s, their friendship binds them together despite their inner and outer turmoil, and even betrayal. Living together in their adolescent innocence, they strive to live in harmony despite the implicit differences of class and race and the disruptive stresses of war.

The novel begins with a brief flash forward to 1946. It is just after the end of World War II, and the people of the town of Broome in northwestern Australia are trying to recover from the traumas of war. After a glimpse of the town’s melancholic condition, the novel shifts into the late 1930’s, before the war. Here, the narrator, Alice Penrose’s brother Hart - both children of a pearl fisherman - evokes the beauty and delight of the experience of childhood in the tropical town. Despite the pervasive racism elsewhere in the world, there seems at first to be little overt racism in Broome. Nevertheless, there are hints of past and present strife: there is a deeply underlying prejudice against Australia’s remaining Aboriginal people and the mixture of immigrant non-white races making up the town. Hart’s mother, Ida, rejects her life in Broome and its remoteness to her home and family in England. When she learns of her father’s death, she immediately leaves her family for England. Ultimately, she is killed during an air raid in London.

Mike, Ida’s wife, becomes restless during the dangerous wet season and heads out with Hart to pearl fish in the ocean before the rough conditions subside. They are wracked by a storm, which injures Hart, nearly killing him. In a lucky twist, he is saved by Mitsy’s father, Zeke Sennosuke, who happens to be lost at sea. Zeke sacrifices his life in the rescue. Mitsy and her mother stick together to cope with the loss of Zeke, while Mitsy cares for Hart in the hospital, gradually nursing him back to health.



Meanwhile, the broadening war front draws closer to Australia, threatening the paradisal isolation of Broome. Outraged at Carl’s racism, Alice leaves him, joining the war as a nurse. She is eventually captured, becoming a prisoner of war. Hart’s father tries to protect Mitsy and her mother, feeling intense guilt and sympathy over Zeke’s self-sacrifice. He brings them to his house to live. Eventually, Hart and Mitsy fall in love. Everyone’s relationship is strained because they do not know the fate of Alice. Mitsy and her mother ultimately decide to move out, aided by their friend Jamie Kilian, who Hart considers both his friend and rival.

Hart becomes enraged with jealousy, thinking that Jamie wants to steal Mitsy from him, and confronts him violently just as the war begins to rage in Broome. The Dutch refugees suffer an attack on their seaplanes, leaving Jamie nearly dead at the hands of Hart, who momentarily thinks of leaving him to die, but then saves him. Hart learns that Mitsy can no longer bear to stay with him, driven apart by these violence’s.

At the novel’s end, the narrative returns to the “present” of 1946. In contrast to the flash-forward at the beginning of the novel, now there is a bit of hope. After an air raid by the Japanese and rescue of any survivors, Mitsy and her mother are placed in an internment camp in Victoria, Australia for the rest of the war, yet eventually Mitsy strikes up a written correspondence with Hart again, expressing her love for him. She claims she will return to him, but Hart is unsure they can ever fully restore their relationship. They resume their friendship remotely, but its future is left ambiguous. The novel ends with a greater ambiguity about the fate of the people of Broome and greater Australia, as internees return by ship and are released onto the pier. Though the war has ostensibly ended for now, its endemic problems and divisions related to the conflicts of race and culture remain.



Taking its name from the English translation of the Japanese word “kamikaze,” The Divine Wind represents the plight of different people forced into a singular effort to survive the brutal conflict of World War II. It also pays homage to the plight of the innocent Japanese people who struggled against unwelcoming and racist societies when seeking refuge from their lost homeland. Though the novel suggests a pessimistic outlook on the ability of friendships and romances to outlast the strains of war, it also suggests the ability of a community of subjects to recover from war and accept each other through the process of multicultural reformulation.