Heartland by Jenny Pattrick

I love reading books by New Zealand authors.  I think it is important to support our authors, so I prefer to purchase their books when I can rather than borrow from the library, that way I am financially supporting writing in New Zealand (the little they do get!).  Jenny Pattrick is a celebrated New Zealand author.  She is well known for The Denniston Rose, Heart of Coal, and Catching the Current as well as Landings and Inheritance, Pattrick keeps putting out books that encapsulate great story telling from many different eras and points of view of uniquely New Zealand characters.

 

Here is the front cover and back blurb for Heartland:

 

Heartland is set in the central North Island on the Central Plateau in a small, nowhere town called Manawa somewhere off the beaten track.  Once a bustling forestry town, it's been years and years since its hey day.  The local community is tight knit on one hand, but very private on another, all keeping their own business but curious about each other.

Many houses in the town are owned by city folk who come down for the weekends during the ski season to take advantage of Mt Ruapehu's ski fields and party at night.

The story centres on a young man, Donny Mac, who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.  He was abandoned by his parents to his grandfather at a young age, and after his grandfather passed on two of the older members of the town have kept an eye on him and supported him.

He comes home from a short stint in jail (engineered by the dastardly matriarch of the nearby big smoke of Raetihi) to find a girl, Nightshade, who no one likes, in his home claiming he is the father of her expected child.

Meanwhile, camping out in an abandoned house across the way is another young girl, known as the Virgin, with her baby.

Due to events that unfold due to the untimely disappearance of Nightshade not long after her baby is born, Donny Mac and the Virgin have to join forces to care for each other and their children.  As the story unfolds, each of the town's permanent residents become more entangled in each other's lives in more ways than one and they come to rely on each other more and more.  The strange elderly ladies living over the back fence of Donny Mac's house are also drawn into their lives and the lives of other long term residents of Manawa.

When a film crew comes to town to film a movie, a secret is threatened to be revealed and all are on edge.  But the tight knit community draws together to protect each other and consolidate their reliance on one another.

It is a dark sort of novel.  With the setting being in one of the coldest places in New Zealand, you can't help but feel the cold creep into you as you read.  Events and connections unfold as you become more engrossed in the characters and the secrets they and the town have concealed for so long.

It is indeed very clever story telling.