The Forgotten Coast

A short memoir whose main focus is unpacking a family story that was never told: that a farm in Taranaki on which the family’s generations-long comfortable fortunes rested had been directly taken from the people of Parihaka and given to an ancestor, a member of the Armed Constabulary following the invasion of the village during the New Zealand Wars. Beautifully written, and intertwined with an examination of the authors’ relationship with his father and of his family’s proud Catholicism, not only is this book a fine piece of writing but its key focus is also highly pertinent: How Pakeha New Zealanders should wrestle with, and own, their colonial past.