In Search of a Character: Researching 'the Book of Secrets' (A Symposium on Historical Fiction‪)‬

Nearly twenty years ago, I set out to write a novel based around the Nova Scotian migrations to New Zealand. The central character was a real life person, Reverend Norman McLeod, who led a group of landless Highland Scots to New Zealand, via Nova Scotia and Australia, over a nearly forty-year period, beginning in 1817, and ending with the New Zealand arrival in the 1850S. The story contained the elements of classic adventure and romance. McLeod, at its centre, was a fierce, patriarchal and colourful character, loved by some, reviled by others, and even said to have cut off a boy's ear for alleged theft. I had my own first hand knowledge of the Waipu settlement through having lived there during adolescence, something of a mixed blessing as it turned out. Still, I knew what I was letting myself in for.