This is the story of how Jean Paget, a young English girl, became the leader and the mainstay of a party of British women and children, prisoners of the Japanese, in a nightmare trek through Malaya. Stricken by illness and utter exhaustion many of them died - those who survived owed their lives to Jean's fortitude and strength of character. It tells too how she came to meet again the young Australian who had helped them - whose ghastly torture they had been forced to watch. How she starts a new life in the wilds of Northern Queensland becoming the driving force behind the transformaton of a near derelict collection of houses into a thriving town like Alice Springs.
