It's winter in Logan, south-east Queensland, and still warm enough to sleep in a car at night if you have nowhere else to go. But Kathy Bradley can't sleep. She has driven from Sydney to plan a funeral with her five surviving siblings (most of whom she hardly speaks to) because their sister Annie is finally, blessedly, inconceivably dead from the brain tumour she was diagnosed with twenty-five years ago. Kathy wonders - she has always wondered - did Annie get sick to protect her? And if so, from what? In writing Annie's eulogy, Kathy attempts to understand the tangled story of the Bradley family: their mother's childhood during the Japanese occupation of Singapore in World War Two, their father's experiences in the Malayan conflict and the Vietnam War, Annie's cancer and disability and the events that have shaped the person that Kathy is today. Ultimately, Kathy needs Annie to help her decide whether she will allow herself to love and be loved.
