THE WHITE DOVE. (Ted Witham) Underground resistance in wartime France

From the small country town of Kojonup in Western Australia, where she has learned to handle wheat, sheep, trucks and guns, Emily Collins travels to France, marries into aristocracy and becomes involved during World War II, smuggling Jews and stranded Allied airmen across borders.

In a cat-and-mouse pursuit across France, avoiding murderous French Vichy “milice”, The White Dove is whisked along secret pathways and escape “pipelines” to meet trusted anti-German conspirators in quaintly named French farms and villages. Through shocking tragedies, lost loves and secret meetings our Australian heroine is propelled in breathtaking escapades towards an escape route through the High Pyrenees mountains into Spain. Her skills in French dialects and Latin are invaluable as she encounters country folk and then a Franciscan religious community where she assumes the guise of a Franciscan nun.

Much of her story is possibly foreshadowed in the life story of The White Dove’s author, Anglican minister, scholar and languages lecturer Ted Witham, who like Emily was raised on a wheatbelt farm, studied French and Latin at the University of Western Australia, matriculating from an elite Perth school, an establishment for gifted students, and was coincidentally taught by the same beloved language teacher as Emily Collins.

The story doesn’t end at the Pyrenees. A family farm ownership dispute follows her across France, but is curiously solved by none other than family friend John Curtin, who after her return to Australia has become Australia’s Prime Minister. Emily’s skills and resistance experience now make her an ideal choice for Britain’s Special Operations Executive, or SOE, where she becomes part of the secret spy operations centre at Bletchley.

A flickering romantic attachment with a rescued British airman during their initial escape across the Pyrenees reignites as the two become part of her final spy mission.
Review: Philip Bodeker