My Books
Finding Miriama
It is 2003 in New Zealand, and Louisa Greenwood and her daughter Ngaroma are on a quest to discover their ancestry. Louisa has a greenstone necklace left to her in her father’s will, and from the first time Ngaroma wears it, she has unusual experiences, both good and bad. It leads her to various locations in New Zealand and England until, through a series of meetings and coincidences, she discovers the final resting place of her five times great grandmother.
One hundred and fifty years earlier, Major Joseph Greenwood, with his wife Catherine, is sent via India and England to New Zealand as a Fencible. The couple becomes established in Auckland society and all goes well until Joseph, one drunken night, fathers a son to Miriama Potiki, their live-in housekeeper. What follows is a series of challenges involving the Greenwoods, their friends and family, on both sides of the world, and the ramifications are felt by Louisa and Ngaroma five generations later.
Finding Miriama is about identity, chasing dreams and self-determination: a compelling story set against the background of the the first Anglo-Afghan War and Māori-Pakeha relations in colonial New Zealand.
Of Greenstone and Violins
In the shadows of London's Highgate Cemetery, Ngaroma stands before her great-great-grandfather's crypt, unknowingly about to unravel a tale that spans two centuries and two hemispheres.
Victorian New Zealand sets the stage for an extraordinary story of two brothers bound by blood but divided by empire. Hōhepa, born to a British captain and a Māori mother, navigates a precarious path between two worlds during a time of mounting colonial tensions. Meanwhile, in England, his half-brother Colin, a gifted landscape painter, confronts the suffocating constraints of Victorian society as he struggles to live authentically in a world that denies his true nature and desires. Their unlikely bond challenges the rigid social boundaries of their era, proving that the heart knows no borders.
Now, in 2010, Ngaroma's discovery in that London cemetery will bridge the generations, revealing how love, sacrifice, and forgiveness shaped her family's legacy across oceans and decades. Based on the author's own family history, this richly woven narrative continues the story begun in 'Finding Miriama', exploring how the choices of our ancestors echo through time.