Kitty (34 page)

Union Belle

When the first effects of the 1951 waterfront workers’ strike ripple through the country, Ellen McCabe—wife, mother, union supporter—is happy with her life in Pukemiro, a small Waikato coal-mining town. Even when her husband’s union lays down tools in support and the strain of making ends meet begins to wear her down, she’s ready to play her part in the lean months ahead.

But when Jack Vaughan comes to town, something inside her shifts. Jack is handsome, a charismatic war veteran—and a friend of her husband’s. Suddenly everything changes, with irrevocable consequences, as the turmoil and divided loyalties swirling through the town threaten to tear Ellen apart.

Union Belle
is a story of love, duty and passion played out against the backdrop of the infamous strike that turned friends into enemies, shattered communities and almost brought New Zealand to its knees.

Tamar

When Tamar Deane is orphaned at seventeen in a small Cornish village, she seizes the chance for a new life and emigrates to New Zealand. In March 1879, alone and frightened on the Plymouth quay, she is befriended by an extraordinary woman. Myrna McTaggert is travelling to Auckland with plans to establish the finest brothel in the southern hemisphere, and her unconventional friendship proves invaluable when Tamar makes disastrous choices in the new colony. Tragedy and scandal befall her, until unexpected good fortune brings vast changes to Tamar’s life. As the century draws to a close, uncertainty looms when a distant war lures her loved ones to South Africa. This dramatic story—the first in a sweeping three-volume family sags—has a vivacious and compelling heroine who will live with the reader long after the final page has been turned.

White Feathers

In 1914, Tamar Murdoch’s brothelkeeping days are behind her. Her life is one of ease and contentment at Kenmore, a prosperous estate in the Hawke’s Bay, as storm clouds over Europe begin casting long shadows.

In this gripping second instalment of Deborah Challinor’s sweeping family saga, Tamar’s love for her children is sorely tested as one by one they are called, or driven, into the living hell of World War One.

During the Boer War, Joseph, her illegitimate eldest son, fought as a European, but this time he is determined to enlist in the Maori Battalion, despite his growing attraction for his childhood friend, Erin. As loyalties within the Murdoch clan are divided, and the war takes Tamar and Andrew’s only daughter far from her sheltered upbringing, the people and experiences their children encounter will shape the destiny of the Murdoch clan for generations to come.

Blue Smoke

On 3 February 1931, Napier is devastated by a powerful earthquake—and Tamar Murdoch, beloved matriarch of Kenmore, is seriously injured. As she recovers, Tamar is preoccupied with the ongoing effects of the Great Depression. When her grandson threatens to leave for Spain to join the International Brigade, she feels a familiar dread—once again her family is threatened by war and heartbreak, as Hitler’s armies march.

In the final volume of the Tamar trilogy, the story of the feisty Cornish seamstress who became a brothelkeeper and landowner is brought to a stirring and memorable conclusion.

As always, the characters in this story are all fictional, except for the ones already in the history books. The term ‘Maori’ was not common in 1839 and 1840, but I have used it all the way through the book to avoid confusion and clumsy descriptions of the indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand. The moko song is a traditional Maori waiata, and the Irish lament is also traditional.

Thank you to Historic Places Trust staff at Waimate and Kerikeri, and to Rachel Paul for doing the Maori translation. Thanks also to Lorain Day and everyone at HarperCollins for their ongoing faith, encouragement and really good ideas, and to Anna Rogers for being such a good editor.