This is a three part novel designed to explore the true psychological and emotional effects of warfare on a human being. Also, it exists to capture a true story for the purpose of human betterment—his own father's story. This means that the book is semi-biographical, and that one of the three children in Dorrigo and Ella's family is the author. In any case, the true story centers on the emotional damage that war carnage caused Dorrigo during his longterm imprisonment at a Japanese POW camp in WWII.
The novelist uses two threads to help capture what he sensed in his father's demeanor as a distance, damaged person. Firstly, there is the horror element, the actual terror of Dorrigo being in a life threatening situation as a prisoner of a brutal enemy during war. Then there is the emotional element of guilt and shame. Primarily Dorrigo feels two kinds of guilt—the guilt of his affair with Amy, and the guilt of his sacrificing Darky. When he tries to save Darky, the guards stop him and offer him medicine to help the camp's dying ill, and he accepts their offer and leaves his own nephew (unbeknownst to him at the time) to die.
When he gets back to civilian life, he has absolutely no analog to explain himself to anyone, and the one person he desperately loves and missed during his imprisonment is Amy, who had died in a horrible explosion—so he thought. Because he was told Amy had died, he passed on the only opportunity he had to find the companion he wanted. So, not only does he settle on Ella, but also, he bears his trauma completely alone. To be honest with Ella would involve explaining that he doesn't really like her romantically, so instead, he keeps to himself forever, right until he dies.
