Thomas Keneally's 24th novel picks up where many of his previous 23 left off. Deftly weaving fact with fiction, its themes are war, the relation of the individual to the vast sweep of history and the nature of heroism. More to the point, The Widow and Her Hero is excellent, a worthy successor to The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and Schindler's Ark. The narrator is Grace Waterhouse, an Australian widow whose husband died at the end of the second world war. Beheaded by the Japanese only days before the armistice, Leo was crowned a national hero. But as the years pass, Grace gradually learns the truth about the events surrounding her husband's death in the South Pacific and decides to write it down. What begins as a memoir for her 'bemused' granddaughter becomes an elegy for her husband, her nation and herself - an anthem for doomed youth that meditates on time, sacrifice and the creation of a national myth. Based on the story of the disastrous real-life Operation Rimau, Keneally alternates between Grace's awakening and a diary Leo kept on pieces of toilet paper. Partly a story of Homeric patience and partly an adventure yarn a la Joseph Conrad, The Widow possesses high tension and real emotional depth: a fine achievement.