It was one of Coffin’s great talents, a rare one among men, that others of his kind were eager to do things for him. There was very little he’d hesitate to do for Captain Robert Coffin.
Out in the vastness of the South Pacific it was considered impolite, not to mention potentially fatal, to inquire too closely into a man’s background. The powerful, battered face of his First Mate convulsed into a half-smile.
Aotearoa the Maoris called this place in their melodious language the Land of the Long White Cloud. North Island lay north by northwest, South Island somewhere astern. Robert Coffin was standing by the bowsprit of the schooner Resolute when the question was asked. Why the divvul would anyone want to live at the end of the Earth, sor? As the years of a volatile nineteenth century progress, the indomitable family of the stalwart adventurer the Maori have named “Iron Hair” will struggle, sacrifice, and endure through war, chaos, catastrophe, and change. He gains an unwavering respect for the aboriginal people and their culture, and finds comfort in the arms of his fiery Irish mistress, Mary.īut the unexpected arrival of a China-bound clipper bearing his wife, Holly, and son, Christopher, throws Coffin’s world into turmoil-compounded by the ever-increasing tension between the Maori tribes and the mistrusted “pakehas” who are plundering their land. In the sordid and dangerous South Pacific port of Kororareka, on the sprawling island the native Maori call “the Land of the Long White Cloud,” Coffin builds a successful new life as a merchant. The only son of a poor British coal miner, Robert Coffin sets sail for the far ends of the Earth in search of his fortune, leaving his young bride and infant child behind in England.
A sweeping historical novel set in nineteenth-century New Zealand from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author.
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