A heartbreaking account of the persecution and internment of a family by the Japanese during World War II, told from a child's point of view, 'The Flamboya Tree' is both a tribute to a mother's resilience and a poignant and timeless story. Its simplicity and the universal message of a mother's wartime love and courage infuse an account of terrible hardship with hope and inspiration.
At the age of fifty-eight, Clara Olink Kelly sat down to write her very first book. 'The Flamboya Tree' is a lovingly written memoir that is a compelling tribute to her mother's resilience. Clara writes about her family's internment in a Japanese concentration camp on the beautiful Indonesian island of Java.
Clara's mother, who led a pampered life before the war, enters the camp with three small children, including a six-week-old baby. Their father had already been taken away, forced to work on the Burma railroad. Through four unbearable, inhumane years of camp life, the Olinks survived, thanks to their mother's incredible tenacity.
Told through the eyes of a young Clara, who was four at the beginning of her family's ordeal and eight when it ended, 'The Flamboya Tree' poignantly portrays her mother's unflagging courage and the buoyancy of the human spirit. Just as the family's painting of a Flamboya tree - a favourite artifact of their former life - miraculously survives every last-minute flight and surprise search by the Japanese, Clara carries her mother's spirit of love, humour, and bravery through all of her experiences and into the reader's heart.
