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A Town Like AliceA Town like Alice is a novel by the English author Nevil Shute. It was first published in 1950. The "Alice" in the title refers to Alice Springs, Australia. In the first part of the story, set a few years after World War Two, a young woman, Jean Paget, who was working in Malaya when the Japanese invaded, tells her London lawyer the story of her time in Malaya during the war. She was one of a party of European women who were marched around Malaya by the Japanese, since no camp would take them in and the Japanese army would not take responsibility for them. Many of them die on the march, and the rest survive only by the charity of the local villagers. On their march from one village to another, she meets a young Australian soldier, Joe Harman. He steals food and medicines to help them, and is severely punished by the Japanese authorities. They think he died. In the second part of the story, Jean, who has inherited a substantial amount of money from a distant relative, returns to Malaya to attempt to help the people in a village who sheltered them. When she arrives, she learns that the Australian survived his punishment and is still alive. But in the meantime, Joe he has learned that she survived the war, and has travelled to Britain in search of her. They finally meet again in Australia, and eventually decide to marry. Using her inheritance, Jean helps to build a small outback town into a place where people would like to live—a town like Alice Springs. Despite the title of the book, very little of the action actually takes place in Alice Springs. Jean stays there whilst searching for Joe and is much impressed with the quality of life there. Jean and Joe start several business enterprises in an attempt to convert the primitive outback Willstown into A Town Like Alice.
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