Author(s): Christina Thompson

SECONDHAND BOOKS | TRAVEL

An improbable cross-cultural love story between a Maori man and an American woman, and the fascinating history that connects them. As an American graduate student in Australia, Christina Thompson travelled on holiday to New Zealand, where she met and fell in love with a Maori man. Their relationship was one of opposites- he was a tradesman, she an intellectual; he came from a background of rural poverty, she from one of middleclass privilege; he was a native, she descended directly from colonisers. Nevertheless, they shared a similar sense of adventure and a willingness to depart from the customs of their families and forge a life together on their own. Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of Thompson's unlikely marriage, but it also encompasses the history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maori in the late 18thand early 19th centuries. In this extraordinary book, which grows out of decades of research, Thompson explores the meaning of cross-cultural contact and the fascinating history of Europeans in the South Pacific, beginning with Abel Tasman's discovery of New Zealand in 1642 and Cook's famous circumnavigations of 1769-79. Transporting us back and forth in time and around the world, from Australia to Hawaii to New Zealand and finally to a house in New England with a history of its own, Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All brings to life a lush variety of characters and settings. Yet at its core, it is the story of two people who, in making a life and a family together, bridge the gap between two worlds.

2008. First edition, first printing. A fine, unmarked and unread copy in a fine, unclipped d/w.