Spirit House — Mark Dapin

Witty, wise, and deeply moving, this is a remarkable novel, a story of the fall of Singapore and life as a POW, and of a young boy making sense of his future while old men try to live with their past

David is 13 and confused. His mother has left with her lover and dumped David on his grandparents. David's grandfather, Jimmy, is 70. He spends his days at the social club grumbling with his three best friends, all of them Jewish-Australian survivors of the enforced labor camps of the WWII Thai-Burma Railroad. But behind their playful backbiting and irresistible wit, Jimmy and his friends are haunted by the ghosts of long-dead comrades, and the only person Jimmy can confide in is a 13-year-old from a different world.