Behind the Tattooed Face

Cape Catley, May 2005, reprint.

It?s the late 1700s; about 600 years after the great canoes from the Central Pacific arrived in New Zealand. Here in the new land off the Canoe Coast, now known as the Bay of Plenty, the people settled and prospered and Maori society reached the zenith of its power and development. Then, as the people multiplied, the question of survival became inextricably interwoven with the concepts of mana and tribal honour. The delicately poised balance of power was easily upset and bloody warfare, cannibalism and slavery prevailed. Now in its fifth printing, this electrifying novel is the first NZ historical novel to be written by a Maori and the first serious attempt to show pre-European Maori as they really were. About the author Heretaunga Pat Baker was the eldest son of Pita Heretaunga Baker, an upoko ariki of the East Coast and Bay of Plenty, and hereditary chief of the Whakatohea in Opotiki. Through his mother he was closely connected to leading Maori families of Ngati Kahunguna in Hawke?s Bay and Gisborne areas. Pat Baker was the first Maori to be granted a university bursary to study journalism and worked on several papers in the South Island before returning north to Opotiki to farm. Later he went back south to enter ?the business world of the Pakeha?.