Settler's Creek

Carl Nixon is a New Zealand author and a very good one based on this book.   It is a book that has its own controversy as the subplot tries to state that the white settlers have as much history and relation to the land as the Maori. This is sure to be controversial and could provide debate in a country where there is already tension between the two majority races, but as a story it is the basis for a wonderful tension.

A boy commits suicide and we never really learn about who is is and why he did it, but we do learn about the parents - the biological father - Maori and the father who raised him - white settler family.  It is the tension between the fathers that leads the reader through the story, the country and the cultures.

It is the burial that becomes the source of friction - the desire to have the boy buried in the land of his ancestors and in a funeral that reflects that ancestry.  But which is the right ancestry?  Who will get their way?  The body is stolen, the body is carted around the country.  The boy gets more attention than he ever did when he was alive (we assume) and the two fathers must resort to every means that they can conceive to put their son in the ground of their choosing.

It would be a shame if this book took on racist overtones but it can.  My warning to the reader is to avoid going there and just enjoy the implausibility and the angst that carries you along with the white father - Box, and realize that we never get a complete connection with the Maori - Tipene.