The yellow peril has finally made it to Australia in John Hooker’s new novel The Bush Soldiers. The Japanese have invaded. The year is 1943. A trail of devastation in their wake, the Australian population, so it seems, has fled to the West, leaving a scattered but dedicated resistance force (the Volunteer Defence Corps) “to delay and deny” anything left of value to the enemy. An Australian veteran of the Great War, Geoffrey Sawtell, with his offsider, an Irish Catholic drifter, join forces at Bourke with two British veterans – a major and a padre – and a young Jackaroo from the outback. Their mission: to sabotage a mine at the Japanese held Broken Hill. Mission accomplished, they are forced to retreat into central Australia, into the desolate, uncompromising landscape, their trek re-creating the myth making trail of Burke and Wills. Pursued by an unseen enemy they move relentlessly forward until they too are destroyed – not by the enemy but by the country itself.