Ballot: When Fate Called Their Name

It is 1969, and the American war in Vietnam is raging. The Australian government has agreed to the US President’s request for military support in the struggle against Communism. Australia unhesitatingly responds by enforcing conscription. Twenty-year-old men are selected by ballot of their birth dates drawn from a lottery barrel, sending them to the war-ravaged jungles of Vietnam. When their birthday numbers tumble from the call-up ballot drum, Mitch Masters, a talented motorcycle speedway competitor, destined for international fame and fortune, Jay Petrovitch, the son of Russian refugees, Greg Sunderland, dentistry school dropout, and wannabe rock star, and Kiwi, a construction worker from New Zealand, find themselves on the sharp end of the fog of war and political duplicity. For years following the end of the war, rumours of POWs shipped off to the USSR filtered through the ranks of the war’s Australian veterans. Was it possible that Aussie Diggers were among them? The Australian authorities said no. Is this Australia’s greatest cover-up? From the inner suburbs of Sydney, through the jungles of Vietnam, the Closed Cities of the Soviet Union, the horror of combat, the oscillations of xenophobic and patriotic pressures, and the collisions of ingrained world-views, Ballot is a gripping novel of allegiance and identity. Of mateship that transcends three decades, three continents, and opposing political and social philosophies.