The Breaking Wave

The Breaking Wave is one of Nevil Shute’s most poignant and psychologically suspenseful novels, set in the years just after World War II. Sidelined by a wartime injury, fighter pilot Alan Duncan reluctantly returns to his parents' remote sheep station in Australia to take the place of his brother Bill, who died a hero in the war. But his homecoming is marred by the suicide of his parents' parlormaid, of whom they were very fond. Alan soon realizes that the dead young woman is not the person she