The Singing Whakapapa

Plot

Two stories intertwine, that of missionary John Flatt, witness to Waharoa's war of the 1830's the death of a young woman Tarore, and the singing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and of his great-great-grandson Hugh Grant, a retired librarian, who tries to understand his own life by exploring that of his ancestors. The mixture is of historical (real) and fictional characters. Stead is the author of five previous novels, including 'All Visitors Ashore' and 'The Death Of The Body'. He has won the New Zealand Book Award for both poetry and fiction.