Murray Barrett is attached to the 39th battalion: the famous group of young men and unseasoned soldiers that did battle on the Kokoda track. Things are looking bad for them, and there is talk among the soldiers that it will be a slaughter as they dig in at Isurava and wait for the Japanese to arrive.

In the damp, disease-filled jungles of Papua New Guinea, Murray finds to his horror that he will have to fight alongside his worst enemy, Sid: a bully, a symbol of all the things back home that Murray has joined up to avoid and a constant reminder of his own feelings of inferiority and cowardice. On the track, memories of home assail him: memories of his family, of rural Australia of the thirties and forties, of the events that led him there.

But does Murray have the courage to do what he has to do? And what is courage, after all?

Break of Day is a powerful and insightful historical novel tackling a timely subject.