Until the Red Leaves Fall is set across two timelines; the vibrant 1950s theatre scene in Melbourne and the Tatura Internment Camps during World War II
Emmy (Emiko) is a dutiful wife who frequently helps her husband Sebastian rewrite scenes when he’s working on one of his plays. Having longed to be a playwright herself Emmy jumps at the chance to write her own play telling the story of her family’s experience as Japanese-Australians being held in an internment camp during the war.
Theatre owner and lead actress Virginia van Belle makes so many changes to Emmy’s play it no longer resembles her family’s story and is instead full of racial stereotypes and inaccuracies. Devastated at the damage the play will do to her family, while also chafing at societal expectations, Emmy turns to her new friend Isadora for solace.
This was a really interesting multilayered story and I found Emmy to be a sympathetic and engaging character. The flashbacks slowly revealed more of Emmy’s past and the sacrifices she made as she strives to achieve an identity beyond that as somebody’s wife.
Until the Red Leaves Fall does a great job at shining a light on migrant Australians and the injustices done to them because of their ethnicity. The side characters in this book added depth to the storyline, particularly the forbidden love and found family aspects of the story.
This story touches on themes of race, gender and sexuality in the 1950s. There are twists and turns with betrayals and secrets revealed amid shifting relationships. Both time periods are written in a way that I was immersed in the storyline, and I didn’t want to stop reading until the book was finished!
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Publisher: HarperCollins
Format: Ebook
ASIN: B0DVVJLJYC
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Here’s the synopsis
Emmy Darling has a secret. She has a few. Her lemon meringue pie is a recipe from a women’s magazine, she’s always wanted to be a playwright, and the best parts of her husband Sebastian’s plays are the scenes she’s written during edits. But when charismatic theatre impresario and leading lady, Virginia van Belle, insists Emmy write about her wartime experiences as the lead play in her 1957 season, Emmy is faced with every writer’s dilemma.
Because Emmy’s biggest secret is that her name is actually Emiko Tanaka. She and her Japanese-Australian family were arrested, brutally split up and held in internment camps by the Australian government after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. And it’s this secret that Virginia wants to bring to the masses.
As Emmy struggles to determine where the edges of truth and fiction blur, Virginia’s vision of the story morphs into something more sensationalised. Emmy can’t ask for Sebastian’s help – he has his own history with Virginia – but she confides in Isadora Westlake, a dancer at a nearby coffee lounge, who knows a thing or two about keeping secrets.
As opening night looms and rewrites threaten to transform Emmy’s personal history into something unrecognisable, wounds of the past are torn open, jeopardising everything Emmy holds dear. As the cast take their places and the curtain goes up, Emmy must decide which is right: tell the story or tell the truth.
From barbed-wire fences to the lush velvet seats of the Belleview Theatre, Until the Red Leaves Fall is a stunning tale of secrets and betrayal in the aftermath of war that asks: what happens when you let the truth get in the way of a good story?
What Caz Read 