Under the Java Moon: A Novel of World War II

In Java, Dutch East Indies, on the brink of World War II, the quiet existence of a Dutch family is upended when the Netherlands declares war on Japan. The Japanese military occupies Java, and Mary Vischer, her two children, and her mother are imprisoned in Tjideng, a POW camp. Mary is three months pregnant when she enters the camp. She and her family try to survive the deplorable conditions, where torture and death are daily occurrences, and only the strongest make it. Mary’s husband George, serving in the Dutch navy, is captured by Japanese forces early in the war, and neither he nor Mary know if the other is still alive. When the war finally ends, there is no peace in the Dutch East Indies, as the Indonesian population begins to seek independence from the Netherlands, and the colonizers, the Dutch, soon become refugees. Resonating with stories of the best and worst amidst the cruelties of war, though viewed through the colonizers’ perspective as opposed to that of Indonesians, this novel from Moore (In the Shadow of a Queen) highlights an area less explored in WWII fiction.