From its curious title to the arresting cover design, Tom Keneally's latest novel is sure to attract attention. The cover of Corporal Hitler's Pistol features Smith Street in Kempsey (a real town in the Mid North Coast region of New South Wales), where the story is mostly set, and the image comes from the NSW State Archives where you can see that the (undated) original does not have that striking image of a smartly dressed woman standing all alone in a road largely empty of cars. The novel is set in the interwar years, and that superimposed image alludes to Florence (Flo) Honeywood, wife of the eminent master builder Burley Honeywood.

It is 1933 as the Depression is starting to impact on the fortunes of many, when Flo makes an unpalatable discovery. In town, she sees a dark-skinned boy called Eddie Kelly who bears a marked resemblance to her husband, and she is outraged. Not just by Burley's adultery, and not just because it both pre-and post-dated their marriage, but also because she learns that Burley is not the only townsman who visits Burnt Bridge looking for skirt whether the Aboriginal women agree to it or not. Flo is livid with Burley, but she is also outraged that the child's prospects are so different from Burley's other children. In her ham-fisted but courageous way, she barges past the racism of the shop and the school and tries to kit him out in school uniform for the local school and makes plans to send him to the same prestigious school in Sydney that her son goes to. She does not understand that these are not her decisions to make, and her actions bewilder Eddie's Aboriginal guardian but she is motivated by a desire to improve his life (as she judges it). In the process she scandalises the town by taking coffee with Eddie Kelly's aunt Alice in the local café, and what's more, she sets up a meeting with Alice under the auspices of Chicken Dalton, the openly gay pianist at the local picture theatre.

Flo and her shocking troubles when Burley reacts to her assertive demand for a divorce is one strand in a many layered novel.

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