William and Tiraha | Michael Littlewood

Paihia, 1823, and William Cook is injured, abandoned by his whaling ship. He is nursed at the Mission by Tiraha, whāngai daughter of the great chief Nene. Fifty years later, this couple’s grandson meets his grandparents for the first time and hears the story of their long life together. Abraham senses long-buried secrets as his grandfather tells how, abandoned once again, this time with a young family in the isolated deep south, he and Tiraha drew on the knowledge and skills of both their cultures to survive, and to escape. Pioneer shipbuilders on remote Stewart Island, and making ingenious use of scarce resources, William and Tiraha eventually cross the Tasman with their growing family to deliver a new-built vessel for the Weller brothers. They return, finally, to the Bay of Islands to witness the coming of British law, the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the Flagstaff Wars. Despite the tensions from their own divided loyalties in these turbulent times, William and Tiraha grow to understand each other and the new country they are helping to shape. A first-person story inside a nineteenth-century memoir, constructed as a novel – Michael Littlewood has taken historical evidence and family lore and produced a compelling work of biographical fiction for adventure-seekers, seafarers and anyone intrigued by the earliest days of Pākehā–Māori relations.