All the Seas of the World

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

Growing up in a village in New South Wales, Australia, in the 1950s,
Bernadette and Deirdre seem destined to be friends for life. But, as
Bernadette says, “It is good fortune we walk backwards into the
future.” Deirdre becomes a journalist and is sent to cover the Vietnam
War in 1967, just before the Tet offensive. In Saigon, she meets and
eventually marries Martin, an Anglo-Argentinean journalist whose
involvement with Argentina’s politics slides into tragedy when he
becomes one of the “Disappeared.” Deirdre does not recover from her
loss and drops out of sight.

Reid’s writing has a stream-of-consciousness quality, but there is
enough focus to keep the reader in the know, and she manages to
translate Australian-English and Argentinean-Spanish phrases without
spoiling the rhythm of her prose. The story itself is fascinating.
Descriptions of wartime Saigon, 1960s London, the plight of
anti-government forces in Argentina, and the interplay of characters
absorb the reader totally.