The Love Dorrigo Cannot Name
The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthThis flow follows Dorrigo Evans’s attachment to Amy Mulvaney as it persists through absence, memory, and his attempts to replace it.
increasing
Bearing strength in each event
decreasing
An Unexplained Attraction

A Feeling Without a Name
The Encounter
Dorrigo Evans expects to return to his ordinary life but is unsettled by Amy Mulvaney’s presence. Their conversation seems small, yet its effect is disproportionate.
The First Dislocation
He leaves confused and continues thinking about her. The feeling begins as a disturbance in a future he had assumed was already settled.
The Affair’s Intensity

Desire as a Separate World
Growing Attachment
Dorrigo Evans and Amy Mulvaney seize time together wherever they can. Their meetings make ordinary life feel distant and strangely unreal.
Fear Alongside Joy
Dorrigo wants closeness but fears losing his freedom and future. The very attachment he pursues makes him want to escape.
Separation at the Barracks

Leaving Without Farewell
An Abrupt Departure
Dorrigo Evans learns that his unit will leave earlier than expected. He has no time to meet Amy Mulvaney after their last call.
A Promise Left Behind
He imagines a future return and marriage, but the promise is separated from the person who might have answered it. War begins to shape their relationship through absence.
Memory Turns to Fragments

Love Under Memory’s Pressure
Faces Fade
Dorrigo Evans remembers fragments of Amy—her voice, scent, flower, and necklace—but cannot reliably recall her face. The memory is powerful without being whole.
Desire and Loss
He continues to love an absent person, while the men around him die and the present becomes nearly impossible to endure. Memory preserves and distorts at once.
A Promise Misread

A Love Too Late
The Moment Returns
Dorrigo Evans sees Amy Mulvaney alive and is overcome by the past. He believes the promise of return should still matter.
A Different Reality
He walks past her without speaking, while Amy sees his failure to approach as a rejection. Each has lived for decades with an explanation the other never knew.
At the Adelaide bookshop in 1940
During the summer before deployment
On the day Dorrigo receives his deployment order
During Dorrigo’s captivity on the railway
On Sydney Harbour Bridge, decades after the affair