The War Widow by Tara Moss
What's It About?
“Rich … a fierce, feminist heroine distinguish[es] this stylish twist on the classic 1940s detective novel.” — Publishers Weekly“Completely gripping and entertaining from beginning to end.”
— Hugh Jackman
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The War Widow is poised to be Tara Moss’s breakout novel in the U.S., especially given the book’s saucy leading lady, Billie Walker, a war reporter turned Private Investigator in post-WWII Australia who — much like Moss herself — refuses to be defined or held back by any man on her quest for justice.
The book is a fun throwback to the hard-boiled tradition, but with a twist — it’s female-led and focused on ordinary people. Billie’s caseload is picking up as is her fight against injustice in post-war Australia. Along the way, she’s joined by her informant and friend, Shyla, a Wiradjuri woman who deals with the compounded prejudices experienced by Aboriginal women, and her assistant Sam, an injured war vet with his own demons to conquer.
As the trio searches for a kidnapped immigrant boy, they soon find themselves going head to head with massive social and political change in addition to ongoing racial and class divisions. But Billie isn’t backing down … and she’ll look good and drive fast doing it.
For Moss, the WWII era loomed large in her family. She was raised on her Oma and Opa’s stories about escaping the Nazis in occupied Europe. Moss’s Opa was forced into a Nazi work camp in Berlin, and her Oma risked it all to cycle across Holland to visit him, smuggling flour and sugar in the hollows of her bicycle past multiple checkpoints. Her Opa used those ingredients to bake bread to bribe the foreman who eventually gave him a day pass, which he used to escape.
Echoes of Moss’s family history ring through in the work as do elements of Moss’s personal advocacy and passions, including vintage fashion, speaking out for disability rights, and putting a feminist twist on the noir tradition.
