{"id":503,"date":"2009-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T23:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=503"},"modified":"2025-05-03T14:00:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T02:00:34","slug":"isle-of-tears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/01\/01\/isle-of-tears\/","title":{"rendered":"Isle of Tears"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Deborah Challinor<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>HarperCollins<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, 2009<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>Isle of Tears<\/em> by Deborah Challinor is my new favourite among her historical novels.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Set during the Maori land wars, its teenage Scottish narrator provides an alternative view to the standard Pakeha perspective of the conflict.\u00a0 When Isla McKinnon\u2019s parents are killed by a fellow settler, the local hapu, Ng\u0101ti Pono, whangai her and her siblings, Neil, Jamie and Jean.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">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.\u00a0\u00a0 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">When she takes a warrior as her husband, her identity as P\u0101keha M\u0101ori 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Although most of the characters and the Ng\u0101ti Pongo hapu are fictional, their customs and practices are based on historical fact, albeit amalgamated from those of several different iwi.\u00a0 Not only does this give an insight into everyday M\u0101ori 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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deborah Challinor<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Otago Daily Times review 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[88,68,370,421,500,18],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-88","tag-deborah-challinor","tag-fiction","tag-historical","tag-nz-author","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}