HOW does Bryce Courtenay do it? Each year he writes a door-stopper of a book.

His latest offering is again a page-turner.

Courtenay's big yarn begins in Sydney after the Great Depression and he is spot on with his sense of the past.

The life of his central character, Danny Dunn, is as tough as it is engrossing.

Dunn's parents run a pub and Dunn has already made his mark as an 18-year-old with ambitions and talent to burn.

Still, his tough working-class background is an additional hurdle for success.

Like many of his generation, the outbreak of war changes everything permanently.

Courtenay is in his element when he delves into Australian history.

Dunn enlists and is then captured when Singapore falls.

At this point, the novel changes significantly.

What we come to understand is how the unspeakable hardships of the Burma Railway change Dunn.

Once a fresh-faced optimistic boy he, like many others, returns a broken man.

More than this, it is through Danny's struggles that we see the social costs of war.

This is the alcoholism, the wife-beating and child abusing as ex-serviceman try to adjust to civilian life.

Many fail.

Much of this novel is gritty realism.

But there is hope and tenderness as well.

Danny is redeemed by the love of his wife Helen and later, his children.

More than this, he finds work assisting returned servicemen and their families, who are deeply affected by the aftermath of war.

Dunn emerges as an unlikely hero.

Courtenay has tackled a period in Australia's past that was the ruination of many.

This is a great sweeping novel to lift the spirit.