Strangerland: A Family at War [Hardcover]

'With so much to tell... Drysdale’s gripping storyline manages to balance historial detail with a cracking good yarn.'

'Her faithful descriptions…are unforgettable’

‘wonderful’

'Drysdale's Strangerland stays in the mind because of its mixture
of history with the personal, which makes the history live.'

Exile, estrangement and adultery in nineteenth-century New Zealand

In 1834, when Isabella Campbell was twenty-four, she left England for India, where she met the man that would become her husband: Charles Gascoyne. Life settled into a routine, but there was upheaval ahead, on a scale no-one could have expected: after twenty-six years in India, Charles decided the family would leave for New Zealand; Isabella, who was unwell, would return to England, and rejoin her husband and children later. In fact, it would be over a year before Isabella was reunited with her family -- or not, as it turned out. Arriving in New Zealand, Isabella discovered the children's governess had become her husband's lover; Charles blamed Isabella for the failure of their marriage -- a marriage she had not even realized was under threat. It was not just Isabella who found herself in crisis, however: the country itself was in turmoil, as British settlers warred with native Maoris. For Isabella, events came to a head -- and the public became personal -- when some of her own relatives were slaughtered.

Helena Drysdale is the author of four highly acclaimed travel books: Alone Through China and Tibet, Dancing with the Dead, Looking for George: Love and Death in Romania (which was shortlisted for the Esquire/Apple/Waterstone's Non-Fiction Award and the J.R. Ackerley Award for Autobiography) and Mother Tongues: Travels in Tribal Europe. She lives in Somerset.