The story of Walter Mantell’s 1848 journey down the east coast of the South Island, to set aside reserves for Ngai Tahu within a large block purchased by the government, is told in counterpoint with a modern woman’s very different story of violence on a South Island farm. This absorbing novel about different ways of seeing the land, and about the deals we make with each other in politics and in love, is finely observed and evocative.