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  • Published: 1 December 2010
  • ISBN: 9781869794040
  • Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 330

Settlers' Creek



A poignant and contentious novel by a rising star of New Zealand literature.

A poignant and contentious novel by a rising star of New Zealand literature.

Box Saxton just wants to bury his teenage stepson’s body in the churchyard near the farm where Box grew up. What happens, though, when the boy’s biological father, a Māori leader, unexpectedly turns up in the days before the funeral and forcibly takes the boy’s body? According to Māori custom the boy must be buried in the tribe’s ancestral cemetery at the small coastal town of Kaipuna. According to the law there is very little Box can do. With no plan and little hope, Box gets in his old truck and drives north, desperate and heartbroken.

Settlers' Creek explores the claims of both indigenous people and more recent settlers to have a spiritual link to the land.

'Brave, bold and unflinching, Carl Nixon's Settler's Creek is one of the best novels to come out of New Zealand. It's not only a gripping, brutal, thriller but also a dissection of a country and its culture. It's the kind of book that gets you run out of town.' - Witi Ihimaera

  • Published: 1 December 2010
  • ISBN: 9781869794040
  • Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 330

About the author

Carl Nixon

Carl Nixon is an award-winning short story writer, novelist and playwright. He has twice won the Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition, and won the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Short Story Competition in 2007. His first book, Fish ’n’ Chip Shop Song and other stories went to number one on the New Zealand bestselling fiction list, and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book.

Nixon completed his first novel while he was the Ursula Bethell/Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence at Canterbury University in 2006. Rocking Horse Road saw him identified as ‘a major talent’ by North & South, and was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2009. It has been published in China, France, and Germany and was on several lists for the best crime novels in Germany in 2012. His second novel, Settlers’ Creek, was also long-listed for the Dublin Literary Award. His novel, The Virgin and the Whale is being developed as a feature film by South Pacific Pictures.

His stage plays have been produced in every professional theatre in New Zealand. They include Mathew, Mark, Luke and Joanne, The Birthday Boy and The Raft. He has adapted for the stage Lloyd Jones’s novel The Book of Fame and JM Coetzee’s Disgrace. He was awarded the 2020 Howard McNaughton Prize at the Adam NZ Play Awards, recognising excellence in an unproduced script.

In 2018 Carl Nixon was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in France where he worked on The Tally Stick.

See more at www.carlnixon.co.nz/

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Praise for Settlers' Creek

Carl Nixon's first two books signaled a writer worth watching. His new work, Settlers' Creek, is a Pandora's box. It is the kind of novel that will be loved as much as it is loathed. It will raise fiercely contested issues as much as it tells a story. The storyline is simple, the effects complicated…. Two families come into conflict over the burial of a teenage boy. Box Saxton wants to bury his stepson (he raised him most of his life) in the local cemetery, but the biological father wants to return him to ancestral ground …..The second half of the book is a terrific portrait of the way grief can send you out of your mind and make you behave in unpredictable and irrational ways….(Nixon) shows what a master craftsman he can be. There is the poignant scene where Box and Liz bathe the un-balmed body of their dead son. Exquisite writing.

New Zealand Herald

Nixon has a special gift for conveying a sense of place, and that that place is recognizably ours adds to the pleasure of reading him. He writes with immediacy and richness of detail, and his characterization is excellent….Settlers Creek is an immensely gripping novel, even in the time of earthquake it will do well.

The Press

Carl Nixon is stunningly talented ….His second novel, Settlers' Creek, is a fascinating portrayal of a man alone in the midst of a complex cultural conflict … Nixon sets up a fruitful allegory between the nation Box's ancestors adopted and the son Box adopted, loved and nurtured. These claims are not biological or legal ones, but are moral, spiritual and emotional. Thus the political becomes personal again, and the story of Settlers' Creek returns to Box and his experience, perfectly balancing the exploration of a very contemporary issue with great storytelling.

The Listener

Brave, bold and unflinching, Carl Nixon's Settlers' Creek is one of the best novels to come out of New Zealand. It's not only a gripping, brutal thriller but also a dissection of a country and its culture. It's the kind of book that gets you run out of town.

Witi Ihimaera

... the most problematic book in modern Kiwi literature

Victor Roger, New Zealand Books

With this fascinating odyssey of two different families in mourning Carl Nixon strikes at the most sensitive parts of the human soul... It is definitely worth going on this journey. It takes us not only to the roots of New Zealand but further, to the stranger in all of us.

Anja Hirsch, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Nixon brilliantly manages the balancing act between his characters’ extreme emotions and the culturally explosive issues he is exploring... An exciting New Zealand novel which deals with more than just crime and atonement. - Awarded Five stars

Meike Dannenburg, Bucher Magazine

Settlers Creek is a thriller without a crime – a hard and extremely disillusioning book about the ongoing conflict of identity and politics.

Kolja Mensing, Die Zeit

Atmospheric descriptions of landscapes, lovingly portrayed characters, as well as subtly interlaced family bonds and traditions complete the sometimes very thrilling action.

Heike Geilen, Tabularass