It's Melbourne, 1942 and the world is at war... Melbourne is a city on edge.
Faye Beauregard, the daughter of one of the city's most prominent families, is torn between duty and desire. When battle-hardened American fighter pilot Peter lands in Australia, a chance encounter at the Windsor Hotel throws them into each other’s orbit—and nothing will ever be the same.
Faye is disillusioned by Melbourne’s rigid social expectations and the passionless courtship of Clive Wilson—the city’s most eligible bachelor. For years, she had been dying to fall in love, and to have a man fall in love with her but is a proposal from childish, unromantic Clive, fait accompli?
Faye is drawn to Peter’s raw intensity and quiet vulnerability, while he is captivated by her joy, beauty and defiance of convention. But love in wartime is never simple.
Peter is an outsider—an American, a soldier, and a man shaped by loss. Pragmatic, weary and haunted by ghosts from the past, he struggles to reconcile with his true identity, while Faye wrestles with the weight of expectation.
Their love challenges the unspoken rules that govern class, religion and respectability. Despite their differences, they share an intense emotional and romantic bond that threatens to upend their lives.
They must each decide what they're willing to risk for a chance at something real.
FLIGHT is the second novel by award-winning Australian author Anne Vines. Set in the shadow of World War II, it delves into the traditional notions of heroism and the glorified battles of the war, confronting the true cost of becoming a hero and the psychological toll of killing.
At the same time, it explores the themes of passion, resilience and choice, shining a light on the often-overlooked, invisible battles fought by women on the home front.
FLIGHT is a poignant, powerful love story that brings to life a forgotten chapter of Australian history.
Historical Romance, WWII, World War II, Heroism, Women in War, Melbourne Society
About The Author
Anne Vines is a Melbourne-based fiction writer. Her novel, The Ship Wife, was published in 2023. Her short stories have appeared in Award Winning Australian Writing, 2015, Word U Up, 2014, Wasafiri Magazine Online, 2016, Ring of Words, 2018, and Boroondara Literary Awards Anthology, 2020.
Anne won the Boroondara Award in 2014 and the Keith Carroll Award in 2020. She was commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2008, and in the Varuna HarperCollins Award in 2007. She was also short-listed for the Alan Marshall Award, The Age Short Story Award and the international Wasafiri New Writing Prize.
Anne has worked on both her novels at Varuna Writers’ Centre. She completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne in Literature and History, and taught in secondary schools and adult education in Victoria and London, which led her to co-write the VCE English and Literature courses.
Anne has lived in England and Germany and travelled in Europe, USA, South America and Asia.
From childhood, Anne loved reading and hearing stories about Melbourne in earlier times. She was intrigued to find out about the city in the 1940s – the dancing, the music, the Yanks and the fear of a Japanese invasion.
Her aunts’ talk of going out, and her uncles’ talk of fighting in the Pacific were exciting and mysterious. There was a gulf between men’s and women’s lives in wartime.
The voices of Faye and Peter came into Anne’s mind and then she could see the two of them in Melbourne. After writing a short story about them, she realised they had a lot to tell.
The novel Flight is the story of what happened to them in 1942.
