As English settlers wage war upon local iwi in colonial Taranaki, two women confront their pasts to survive the present. Frances is an unmarried Londoner newly landed in New Zealand, 1860, at the dawn of the First Taranaki War. Once well-regarded, her family’s fall from grace sees them struggling to learn the strange etiquette of settler life. When Frances comes face-to-face with Henry White, the man who jilted her a decade earlier, he’s standing outside Thorpe’s General Store with a sack of flour in his arms. Henry is married now – to the proud and hardy Mataria, who is shunned by her whanau due to this controversial marriage. As conflict between settlers and iwi rises, both women must find the courage to fight for what is right, even if it costs them everything they know. As their lives intersect in surprising and catastrophic ways, the question remains – will they ever belong, or do their fates lie in the uncomfortable space between? This gripping historical debut by Lauren Keenan (Te Ati Awa ki Taranaki) is a story of the transformative power of hope, the unbreakable bonds of whenua and family, and the discovery of love in the least likely of places.
