Requiem for a Wren

Requiem For A Wren is a novel by Nevil Shute. It was first published in 1955 by William Heinemann Ltd.

Plot summary

Alan Duncan is a recently qualified lawyer returning home to his parents' farm in Australia. He had studied as a Rhodes Scholar after the end of World War II and fought as a pilot, before being injured in action and losing both feet in an air crash. His arrival home, we learn, is marred by the apparent suicide of his parent's housekeeper, a young English woman called Jessie Proctor.

Duncan realises that this troubled woman must have left her personal papers hidden somewhere in case of her suicide attempt not being successful. He searches the house and happens upon a small suitcase of letters, diaries and the woman's passport. He is appalled to learn that the woman is, in fact, Janet Prentice - the fiancée of his dead brother and someone he had spent considerable time looking for immediately after the war.

Reading through Prentice's diaries as he sits close to her dead body, Alan Duncan learns that she has come to Australia specifically because of him. Her revelations do, however, help him think of ways to face the future.