Ned and Katina: A True Love Story

Description

A true story of love in wartime and in peace by one of New Zealand's finest writers. In Crete during the Second World War a wounded Maori Battalion soldier and a young Cretan woman fall in love when the young infantryman is sheltered by her family. After marrying in Crete, Ned and Katina come back to live in New Zealand, settling in the Far North. They live a long, rich and happy life together, raising a family and involving themselves in community affairs there and in the Wellington region. Ned dies in 1987, Katina in 1996. Years later, the whanau of Ned and Katina approached writer Patricia Grace to compile their parents' story. Ned & Katina is the result. This warm, beautifully written true story is impossible to put down.

Patricia Grace is one of New Zealand's most celebrated writers. She has published over 35 titles, including novels, short-story collections, works of non-fiction and books for children, a number of which have been translated into te reo Maori. Among numerous awards, she won the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards in 1986 for the much-loved Potiki, which also won the New Zealand Fiction Award in 1987. She was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story, which won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize. Tu won the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Awards Fiction Prize and the Deutz Medal for Fiction and Poetry. Her children's story The Kuia and the Spider won the Children's Picture Book of the Year and she has also won the New Zealand Book Awards For Children and Young Adults Te Kura Pounamu Award. Patricia was born in Wellington and lives in Plimmerton on ancestral land, in close proximity to her home marae at Hongoeka Bay.