‘This is a book of memories. Some of them are my own. Some of them belong to others. They are as true and as fallible as any memories — distorted by time and distance and a writer’s choice of words…’ Ben Brown writes of that quintessentially New Zealand way of living that may not change the world or even ripple its waters, but is replete with meaning. Gathered from the tobacco-green valleys of the Motueka River where he grew up during the 60s and 70s, Brown’s memoir is rich with a sense of place, of family. The strands of his parents’ lives reach from Outback Australia and the hardship years of the Great Depression and World War II, to the Waikato heart of the Kingitanga and a re-emergent people, to a time and place where ‘tobacco was king’ and a small farm by a river was the sum of all ambition. Each story, each portrait, resonates with the dignity, warmth and understated humour of this fine new poetic voice. First published May 2006.
