A gripping historical novel set amidst the New Zealand Wars in 1860.
How do you choose between two sides, when you don't belong on either?
Frances is an unmarried Londoner newly landed in colonial Aotearoa at the dawn of the First Taranaki War. Once well-regarded, her family's impressive fall from grace sees them seeking their fortune in a raw, new country and struggling to learn the strange etiquette of settler life.
When Frances comes face-to-face with Henry White, the man who mysteriously broke her heart a decade earlier, he's standing outside Thorpe's General Store with a sack of flour in his arms. Flabbergasted, she is determined to find out why he ended their relationship.
Henry is married now, to the proud and hardy Mataria. Humiliated by her staunch sister Atarangi because of her controversial marriage and their painful past, Mataria lives at the edges of her papakainga. With conflict swelling between her iwi and English settlers, Mataria fears for the lives of her husband and their young twins.
When fighting breaks out, Frances and Mataria find their lives intersecting in surprising, and catastrophic, ways. Each woman must confront her past as she struggles to survive the present, both questioning whether they'll ever belong, or if they're doomed to exist in the uncomfortable space between.
This transformative and gripping debut novel by Lauren Keenan (Te ?tiawa ki Taranaki) is a story of the power of hope when everything else feels beyond your control, the unbreakable bonds of whenua and family, and the discovery of love in the least likely of places.
About the Author
Lauren Keenan (Te Ati Awa ki Taranaki) is a writer of creative non-fiction, novels, short stories and popular psychology. Lauren was a winner at the 2017 Pikihuia Awards for Maori writers and a finalist in the 2019 awards. She was also a participant in Te Papa Tupu mentoring programme. Her short stories have appeared in Huia Short Stories collections in 2015, 2017 and 2019. In 2020 her book The 52 Week Project- How I Fixed My Life by Trying a New Thing Every Week for a Year was published, and in 2022 her children's novel Amorangi and Millie's Trip Through Time was published. It was a finalist in the 2022 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and longlisted in the ARA Historical Novel Prize. It also won the 2023 Book Lovers Award. Lauren has a Master of Arts in Taranaki Maori History.
