I love this book and enjoyed Ms Smith's writing style. This is a young adult, historical fiction novel set in the final months of World War II. Although the premise is based on a real-life group of schoolgirls caring for and sending off tokkō pilots, it is about the spaces between sacrifice and duty, grief and hope.

The only thing I knew about tokkō (also known as Kamikaze) pilots is that they deliberately crashed specially made planes directly into enemy warships, which resulted in suicide. It was a desperate policy, obviously.

This book tells us about the lives and feelings of these tokkō pilots, as well as the school girls who cared for them. Ms Smith did her research well. I couldn't put the book down. I felt that I was learning about this particular history in a memorable, personal way.

It's a story about how someone could believe in giving their life for a cause and remain so human.