He’s beaten, crucified, and left to die the women are marched on thinking he’s dead. When Joe gets caught stealing chickens from the local Japanese commander to help the group, he takes the full blame to protect the women. Jean has been taking care of a toddler whose mother died, and Joe assumes she’s married, so they don’t become romantically involved. He steals food and medicine for them to keep them alive.

They’re helped by an Australian soldier, Joe Harman, who works for the Japanese as a lorry driver to stay alive. Many of the women are not used to physical hardship and die on the march. Jean, who speaks Malay fluently, falls into a leading role in the group of prisoners, who are brutally marched around the isle by sadistic Japanese captors.

The reasons for this are explained in part two of the book, which flashes back to her time during the war when she worked in Malay during the Japanese invasion and was taken prisoner with a group of women and children. She decides to make her priority to build a well in a Malayan village. In the interest of MacFadden’s business, but with increasing personal interest as Noel becomes close to Jean, Strachan becomes Jean’s mentor in the financial world and helps her decide how best to spend her inheritance. It’s held in trust until she turns thirty-five Noel is the trustee and can be called upon for financial support if Jean needs it. She returns to England alone after the war and works as a secretary until she gets her inheritance. The twenty-seven-year-old Jean and her brother, Donald, work in Malaya as the war ramps up. A Town Like Alice begins in Scotland, as wealthy Douglas MacFadden dies and his lawyer, Noel Strachan, is sent to find his sole remaining heir, Jean Paget. It remains widely read today, especially in Australia. Exploring themes of war, women’s place in society, race relations, entrepreneurship, and resurrection, A Town Like Alice, considered one of the greatest Australian novels of the era, has been adapted multiple times, most famously as a 1956 feature film starring Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch, as well as a 1981 television drama that aired on Masterpiece Theater in the United States, and a 1997 BBC radio drama.

After being freed, she moves to Australia to be with him, using her financial inheritance to try to turn a small Outback community into a prosperous town - “A Town like Alice” or Alice Springs. British-Australian author Nevil Shute’s historical romance novel A Town Like Alice (1950) is about Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman who becomes romantically interested in a fellow prisoner of World War II being held in British Malaya.

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