Author Heather Morris has penned a new book that focuses on the experiences of a group of Australian Army nurses who were taken prisoner by the Japanese as they tried to sail from Singapore in 1942.
The group had fled from Malaya, and joined other refugees from Singapore, when their ship the Vyner Brooke - like so many others - was bombed.
Surviving the sinking was traumatic enough - but the women would spend the next three years and seven months being shuffled around internment camps on an island off Sumatra.
Despite the horrors of the camp - starvation and disease - the women found a way to boost a morale: through forming a choir led by Margaret Dryburgh and set to music adapted by Norah Chambers - who'd trained at the Royal Academy of Music.
Heather is also the author of the best-selling book The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which is being made into TV series starring Harvey Keitel and Melanie Lynskey.
She followed that up with Cilka's Journey and Three Sisters. She talks to Kathryn about Sisters Under the Rising Sun, which is out today.
