This Way of Life

Description

HarperCollins New Zealand, 2012 | Format: Paperback | Condition: Very Good

Peter and Colleen Ottley-Karena raise their seven children near the Ruahine ranges on something that most of us have quietly given up on: the belief that the natural world is enough. The kids learn to hunt and butcher their own food, break in horses before they’re old enough for intermediate school, and move through risk the way other children move through traffic — alert, capable, unafraid. This richly photographed book follows the family beyond the acclaimed 2009 documentary of the same name, picking up the story as new challenges arrive and the Ottley-Karenas meet them, as always, with characteristic dignity and a refusal to be pushed off course.

The photographs are as central as the words — the landscape of Hawke’s Bay doing as much work as any sentence. This is the kind of book that sits on a coffee table and gets picked up again and again, opened at different pages, handed to people who need to see something outside their usual frame.

Why We Stock It:

A Māori/Pākehā family living outside the mainstream economy, on land they love, by rules they’ve made themselves — the documentary sold to 22 countries and was shortlisted for an Academy Award, but the book is the quieter, longer conversation. Exactly the kind of Aotearoa story The Gravy is here to keep alive.