Flanagan describes his father, a quiet man who was both “substance and non-substance” (41). His father was from a small town in Tasmania. He would tell stories about the people there, but not about those that he saw die as POWs in Japan.

When Flanagan’s father returned from the POW camp, he took a trip all over Tasmania. Flanagan talked to other POWs from Tasmania who described finding peace in the Tasmanian wilderness after their experiences of captivity and forced labor.

Flanagan’s father grew up poor and felt ashamed about it. As a young man, he asked a shopkeeper in the wealthy city of Launceston for a shirt he had seen in Hobart. The shopkeeper refused his request, describing Hobart as “a convict town” (44).