Bunty Preece
Out of Print
Biography of Alfred (Bunty) Preece of the Chatham Islands, soldier, farmer, local body politician, kaumatua and tireless advocate for his people. His recollections of the Italian Campaign of World War Two and the effect of those two and a half years were but the beginning of a lifetime of dedication to the welfare of others. Told in both Maori and English it tells the first hand-experiences, some of them terrifying and others incredibly sad, of a young man at war.
Maori Translation by Kingi Ihaka
ISBN 987-0-9876665-4-3 Published 2012 by John Douglas Publishing. Hardcover with dust jacket.
The Irish Convict Series
True stories of several real Irishmen in the early 1800s are told through the adventures of the fictional Maurice O'Brien. After being convicted and transported to New South Wales, he escapes to New Zealand to carve out a new life with heathen savages and a new name. Hoping for peace and anonymity, he finds anything but. Maurice witnesses New Zealand’s pivotal moments as the Maori grapple with the arrival of Pakeha. When tensions rise over land, he must decide whose side is he on.
Maurice O’Brien is an Irish youth struggling with the mysteries of the transition from boyhood to manhood in Ireland in the 1830’s. Like most young men of the time he was bound to get into trouble with the church, his family and British authorities.
His new life as an Irish convict in the New South Wales penal colony was difficult than Maurice could have imagined. From a tiny well-ordered rural community in Ireland he was caged up with the roughest men in the British Isles for three months at sea.
When Maurice O’Brien reaches New Zealand he was a mutineer and an escaped convict. Surviving in the so-called land of heathen savages and cannibals would be as difficult and dangerous as New South Wales. He has to now settle in a new land.
In spite of the dangers of sailing small boats around Cook Strait and surviving a gunfight with one of the most ferocious musket armed tribes in New Zealand, Maurice O’Brien had made his home in this far flung new British colony.
