Deborah Challinor
HarperCollins
Otago Daily Times, 2009
Isle of Tears by Deborah Challinor is my new favourite among her historical novels.
Set during the Maori land wars, its teenage Scottish narrator provides an alternative view to the standard Pakeha perspective of the conflict. When Isla McKinnon’s parents are killed by a fellow settler, the local hapu, Ngāti Pono, whangai her and her siblings, Neil, Jamie and Jean.
Although initially suspicious of these strange natives, Isla soon comes to recognise close parallels between the whanau, hapu, iwi structure of Maori society and the clan-based divisions of her native Isle of Skye. Nor is this the only point of commonality that emerges, for the Scottish highlanders share the Maori distrust of the English, for both have been dispossessed of their land in the name of a foreign monarch to whom they owe no allegiance.
When she takes a warrior as her husband, her identity as Pākeha Māori is complete, and when the simmering tensions between the settlers and the Northern tribes boil over into open hostility, Isla fights on the Kingite side in defence of her people.
Although most of the characters and the Ngāti Pongo hapu are fictional, their customs and practices are based on historical fact, albeit amalgamated from those of several different iwi. Not only does this give an insight into everyday Māori life in the late 1800s, it also provides an accessible introduction to readers who might not otherwise encounter it, of the effect of colonisation on those who were colonised