The Day we had Hitler Home: A novel

It is 1919, and the Great War ends as it began, with blunders of various sizes.

At Versailles, the first national act of a young Australia is to sign a peace treaty destined to ruin Germany and create the conditions in which Nazism would thrive.

At Yandilli, a remote fishing port in New South Wales, a soldier blinded by gas stumbles off the troop ship and into the homecoming celebrations. But it is not his home: gas blisters in his throat stop him telling anyone that he is German, private first class of the Sixteenth Bavarian Infantry, reserve Division, and that his name is Adolf Hitler.

Audrey McNeil spots him through the lens of her greatest treasure, a movie camera. When she's asked to translate for him, she realizes that this strange soldier from the old world could be a useful weapon in her own war with her elder sister and guardian Sybil, her step-brother Immanuel, and the small town she is growing up in.

'Hitler', if that's really his name, may be just what she's been waiting for. Part novel, part movie reel, The Day We Had Hitler Home hurns with the energy of the newly modern world - aeroplane, film projector, jazz. It tells the story of Audrey's awakening to politics, to love, and to a new age sweeping across the world like a maelstrom.