New Zealand Reads: Harvest

Since its recent arrival, Harvest has been popular with Library readers. It is a New Zealand social history of love for land and family, and the battle between tradition and change from 1930 to late 1970s. 

Rose Mcleod experiences the Napier earthquake and university education in wartime Wellington, before meeting a soldier whose love takes her south to Otago. Against a background of farming challenges, she struggles to live an authentic life amidst the political, economic and social upheavals of the middle years of the twentieth century. Rose wants to break out of the confines of what is expected of her. She must examine her attitudes to freedom and responsibility in a society very different from that of her youth. Revisiting Wellington, Rose discovers it is family, community and the land itself that have bound her with love and a sense of belonging.

Rose McLeod represents a largely ignored demographic of women who shaped the character of their families, women who influenced the culture and political attitudes of New Zealand society during the second world war, the baby-boomer years and into the seventies.

It’s a story that taps into our collective identity, both rural and urban. Non-fiction readers and younger readers often find history comes alive through historical fiction. Rose and her family helps them make sense of women’s struggle in a changing society, and other social upheavals of the era, the foundations of the freedoms of today.

Harvest is available in bookstores and directly from the author.

Attached pics:

Cover Photo Harvest

Book Launch in the Dunningham Suite 26 October 2017