Gunpowder Green: A Nostalgic and Colourful Collection of Rural New Zealand Short Stories
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Book Overview
Nine stories. One hundred years. The warmth, grit, and dry humour of rural New Zealand life - told by someone who knows it from the inside.
From the author of the bestselling Falls Ende medieval saga comes a short fiction collection holding an elite Top 10 global trade rank in Australasian and Oceanian literature - rated 4.96 stars by readers who could not put it down.
Gunpowder Green is a richly textured collection of nostalgic stories set against sheep stations, small towns, bush settlements, and isolated farms - spanning the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries of New Zealand history. These are ordinary people caught in extraordinary moments: neighbours locked in stubborn disputes, small communities delivering their own brand of justice, young love shadowed by war, and characters whose lives are shaped by land, weather, and the unforgiving passage of time.
Spanning a turbulent century of local history, Gunpowder Green weaves together nine unforgettable tales of community, survival, and quiet lives:
Enter the 1885 pioneer frontier of Taranaki, where clearing steep bush country leads to a hilarious backyard battle over a boundary fenceFollow a seasoned high-country muster shepherd into a freezing remote wilderness in a desperate race against hypothermiaFeel the heartbreaking emotional toll of the WWII home front as a tight-knit settlement processes the arrival of a military ballotWitness a side-splitting 1960s small-town policing comedy involving an iconic black EH Holden squad car and a brilliant laxative prankAt the heart of the collection is Burt Jenkins - a solitary hill country farmer whose fondness for Gunpowder Green tea becomes an unlikely symbol of tradition, quiet defiance, and dry wit. Surrounding his story are others that range from warmly comic to deeply moving, revealing the moral codes, tensions, and camaraderie that define close-knit rural communities.
Meticulously researched and deeply evocative, this collection perfectly balances lighthearted country high jinks, black-market underbelly grit, and profoundly moving human truths.
Written with warmth, sharp observation, and understated humour - and in the tradition of James Herriot and Barry Crump - Gunpowder Green is a celebration of a vanishing way of life. Honest, unsentimental, and unforgettable.
A complete nine-story collection - available in paperback and hardcover.
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