South of Martinborough

- Blurb -

South of Martinborough: Two Soldier Settlements and their Neighbours tells the absorbing story of the First and Second World War settlements at Tuturumuri and Tora, and neighbouring properties, and the challenges facing the South Wairarapa district’s pioneering farmers and fishers, as well as developments over the years since. This book has been keenly anticipated since the late 1990s when Danna Glendining began asking residents who had grown up and worked in the district to record memories of their lives there over the decades from the 1920s to the present. When Danna and husband John left their Tuturumuri farm, Brown Hill, for the Waikato in 2000, boxes of precious recollections were homeless until Diane and Ian Grant of Fraser Books, the Wairarapa Archive’s publisher of 34 books about the region’s history, took them into their home. Over time, several interested authors contemplated turning the boxes’ contents into books, until about 2017 Diane Grant bravely said she would take on the challenge. Largely a book about the importance of people and their relationship with the land, the story is told in their own words through diaries, memoirs and interviews from the 19th century to today, bringing them and their times to life. It is the fascinating story of a microcosm of New Zealand society.