When an unlikely ally enters the Bloom family’s world in the form of an injured baby magpie they name Penguin, the bird’s arrival makes a profound difference in the struggling family’s life.

An adult’s memoir of a childhood spent with his mother and two sisters in Australia in the closing year of WWII. While his father off fighting the Japanese, two Italian prisoners of war are assigned to help out on the family’s estate. Later they are joined by two German refugee women. Problems of country life and personal tensions come to a head.