In 1983 I traveled to New Zealand for over 6 months, including stops in Hawaii and Australia. While in New Zealand, I was caught in a flash flood while backpacking alone in the Fiordlands of the South Island. This book is about my near-death experience alone 15 miles from the nearest person. At one point, while swimming through the forest to find high ground, I went under and drowned...saw my life pass before my eyes and the white light at the end of the tunnel. Somehow I made it back to the surface. It is also about my personal exploration as to what was important to me at that time and what continues to be important to me to this day. Things like family, the outdoors, learning about other cultures, reading, writing, and more. Join me on my adventure to New Zealand and into myself.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Polly Evans was a woman with a mission. Before the traditional New Zealand male hung up his sheep shears for good, Polly wanted to see this vanishing species with her own eyes. Venturing into the land of giant kauri trees and smaller kiwi birds, she explores the country once inhabited by fierce Maori who carved their enemies’ bones into cutlery, bushwhacking pioneers, and gold miners who lit their pipes with banknotes—and comes face-to-face with their surprisingly tame descendants. So what had become of the mighty Kiwi warrior? As Polly tears through the countryside at seventy-five miles an hour, she attempts to solve this mystery while pub-crawling in Hokitika, scaling the Southern Alps, and enduring a hair-raising stay in a mining town where the earth has been known to swallow houses whole. And as she chronicles the thrills and travails of her extraordinary odyssey, Polly’s search for the elusive Kiwi comes full circle—teaching her some hilarious and surprising lessons about motorcycles, modern civilization, and men.

A one woman kayaking odyssey when she sets off to voyage around NZ , it tests her limits and what solo means. Her journey doesnt always go to plan. Yes she discovered that one person can achieve monumental things by herself. But she learnt something else too - the power of connection to others. Ultimately, her story is about discovering the god and the bad of being SOLO, in life as well as on the water. An extraordinary woman. An incredible story. But beware: going on this jouney with Red might just change your life.

A book that perfectly balances memoir and history, interweaving a cross-cultural love story with the larger history of the colonial encounter 'A highly unusual blend of personal memoir, travel writing and anthropology' Lynne Truss, Sunday Times 'This book stands out because of its sharp, fine writing ... strong and compulsive' New Statesman _______________________________ Come On Shore and We Will Kill And Eat You All is a sensitive and vibrant portrayal of the cultural collision between Westerners and Maoris, from Abel Tasman's discovery of New Zealand in 1642 to the author's unlikely romance with a Maori man. An intimate account of two centuries of friction and fascination, this intriguing and unpredictable book weaves a path through time and around the world in a rich exploration of the past and the future that it leads to.

The declamatory return; a homeland as a ‘wearying enigma’. This all makes sense to me. The New Zealand that’s home to me may be a place of sheep and rugby and number-eight wire, whatever that is, but it’s also none of those things. Am I still a New Zealander? Award-winning writer Paula Morris confronts long-standing fears of what it means to return home. Is ambition and adventure being traded for a ‘forever home’ of commitments and compromises? Will she still belong? And will the belonging impose its own restrictions? Seeking answers in the words of writer exiles, Morris’s returning takes us back to her childhood streets and ancestral voyages and on, beyond, to the lost New Zealand worlds of her writing.

"Sarah and Jessica arrive in New Zealand for a holiday. They find a mobile phone in the taxi from the airport. It is Michael's phone but can they find him? He has messages from home - are they important? Go with the girls on a New Zealand adventure."--Back cover.

By any measure, New Zealand must confront monumental issues in the years ahead. From the future of work to climate change, wealth inequality to new populism – these challenges are complex and even unprecedented. Yet why does New Zealand’s political discussion seem so diminished, and our political imagination unequal to the enormity of these issues? And why is this gulf particularly apparent to young New Zealanders? These questions sit at the centre of Max Harris’s ‘New Zealand project’. This book represents, from the perspective of a brilliant young New Zealander, a vision for confronting the challenges ahead. Unashamedly idealistic, The New Zealand Project arrives at a time of global upheaval that demands new conversations about our shared future.