Facing danger, despair, back breaking work and heart breaking loss and loneliness, the women who forged a new life in New Zealand in colonial times have never been celebrated, and their stories, with a few notable exceptions, have not been widely sheared. Best selling historian Megan Hutching has brought together the stories of a dozen women of all walks of life, whose personal tales of triumph and adversity make compelling reading, and whose contribution helped forge the character of contemporary Aotearoa, where their descendants owe their lives, and their lifestyles, to the sacrifices and strength of these women of the late 1800s.

Facing danger, despair, back breaking work and heart breaking loss and loneliness, the women who forged a new life in New Zealand in colonial times have never been celebrated, and their stories, with a few notable exceptions, have not been widely sheared. Best selling historian Megan Hutching has brought together the stories of a dozen women of all walks of life, whose personal tales of triumph and adversity make compelling reading, and whose contribution helped forge the character of contemporary Aotearoa, where their descendants owe their lives, and their lifestyles, to the sacrifices and strength of these women of the late 1800s.

Emerging from diaries, letters and memoirs, the voices of this remarkable book tell a new story of life arriving amidst a turbulent world. Before the Plunket Society, before antibiotics, before ‘safe’ Caesarean sections and registered midwives, nineteenth-century birthing practice in New Zealand was typically determined by culture, not nature or the state. Alison Clarke works from the heart of this practice, presenting a history balanced in its coverage of social and medical contexts. Connecting these contexts provides new insights into the same debates on childhood – from infant feeding to maternity care – that persist today. Tracing the experiences of Māori and Pākehā birth ways, this richly illustrated story remains centered throughout on birthing women, their babies and families: this is their history.