Kāwai: Tree of Nourishment

Description

Title: Kāwai: Tree of Nourishment
Author: Dr Monty Soutar ONZM
Publisher: Bateman Books, Auckland, 2024
Format: Paperback
Condition: Excellent – as new

Note: This is Book Two of the Kāwai trilogy. Begin with Kāwai: For Such a Time as This (2022)

Description:

It is 1818 on the East Coast of Te Ika-a-Māui. Hine-aute, granddaughter of the legendary warrior Kaitanga, is running through the bush with her father’s recently decapitated head in a fishing net. She has utu on her mind.

Tree of Nourishment picks up the Kāwai story a generation after Book One, now centred on Hine and her sons as the world around them begins to break apart. The Europeans have arrived. They have brought muskets, foreign diseases, and a new religion that asks Māori to abandon everything they know to be true. From the musket wars and heightened internecine warfare to whalers and missionaries and finally the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi — this is colonisation’s first impact on the East Coast, told entirely from inside te ao Māori.

Tree of Nourishment instantly topped NZ bestseller charts on publication in October 2024, repeating the performance of Book One, which had been No. 1 for 26 consecutive weeks in 2022. The NZ Herald named it “one of the hottest items in the New Zealand book trade.” The NZ Review of Books praised Soutar’s ability to make this period feel “alive and believable” — to deliver historical knowledge through fiction in a way that draws readers in rather than instructing them from a distance.

One Goodreads reader: “The te reo Māori through the book is poetic and beautiful. Reading Soutar’s work feels very much like a privilege. A portal to a world we are all yearning to know and understand.”

Dr Monty Soutar (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a Māori historian with 40 years of research experience. He sold his house and left his job to write this trilogy. The Creative NZ Michael King Writer’s Fellowship funded it. This is the second instalment.

This copy is $19.00. It retails new at $39.99.

Why We Stock It:

The history of the colonial encounter in Aotearoa, from inside Māori experience, by someone who has spent a lifetime in those sources. The musket wars, the missionaries, the Treaty — rendered as lived experience rather than retrospective record. This is the kind of history The Gravy is here to keep on shelves.